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William F. Powell

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Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits: More than 500 Color Combinations for Skin, Eyes, Lips & Hair Spiral-bound – Illustrated, November 1, 2006

by William F. Powell (Author)

4.7 1,628 ratings

Part of: Color Mixing Recipes (5 books)

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Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits features master mixes for an array of skin colors in oil, acrylic, and watercolor—plus recipes for hair, eye, and lip colors. The concealed wire-o bound book also includes a plastic color-mixing grid for measuring out paints, as well as a handy conversion chart for finding acrylic equivalents of oil paints and vice versa. With recipes for more than 500 color combinations, this comprehensive guide is your ultimate source for painting realistic skin, mouths, ears, noses, eyes, and hair.

This convenient guide details three simple steps to mix virtually any skin tone:

Match a palette of skin tones from this book to your portrait subject.
Create the Master Skin Tone Recipe for this palette using the Color Mixing Grid to measure each paint color.
Follow the recipes to create all the skin tones you'll need to complete your portrait—from light values to shadows.

Also featured:

Color theory
Tinting, toning, and shading
Graying skin tones naturally
Identifying facial planes
Mouth, nose, and ear color tones
Eye and hair color tones
Watercolor skin tone recipes

With recipes for more than 500 color combinations, Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits is your ultimate source for painting realistic skin, mouths, ears, noses, eyes, and hair.

Part of series

Color Mixing Recipes
Length

48
Pages
Language

EN
English
Publisher

Walter Foster Publishing
Publication date

2006
November 1
Dimensions

6.8 x 0.4 x 9.9
inches
ISBN-10

1560109904
ISBN-13

978-1560109907
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Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits: More than 500 Color Combinations for Skin, Eyes, Lips & Hair

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Color Mixing Recipes for Landscapes: Mixing recipes for more than 500 color combinations

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1,500 Color Mixing Recipes for Oil, Acrylic & Watercolor: Achieve precise color when painting landscapes, portraits, still li

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

William F. Powell was an internationally recognized artist and one of America’s foremost colorists. A native of Huntington, West Virginia, Bill studied at the Art Student’s Career School in New York; Harrow Technical College in Harrow, England; and the Louvre Free School of Art in Paris, France. He was professionally involved in fine art, commercial art, and technical illustrations for more than 45 years. His experience as an art instructor included oil, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, and pastel—with subjects ranging from landscapes to portraits and wildlife. He also authored a number of art instruction books, including several popular Walter Foster titles. As a renowned master of color, Bill conducted numerous “Color Mixing and Theory” workshops in various cities throughout the U.S. His expertise in color theory also led him to author and illustrate several articles and an educational series of 11 articles entitled “Color in Perspective” for a national art magazine. Additionally, he performed as an art consultant for national space programs and for several artist’s paint manufacturers. Bill’s work also included the creation of background sets for films, model making, animated cartoons, and animated films for computer mockup programs. He produced instructional painting, color mixing, and drawing art videos.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Walter Foster Publishing; Spiral edition (November 1, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Spiral-bound ‏ : ‎ 48 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1560109904
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1560109907
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.3 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.75 x 0.38 x 9.88 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #57,856 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Art Portraits
- #15 in Acrylic Painting
- #97 in Graphic Design Color Use

Customer Reviews:
4.7 1,628 ratings

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William F. Powell

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

William F. Powell is an internationally recognized artist and one of Americas foremost colorists. A native of Huntington, West Virginia, Bill studied at the Art Students Career School in New York; Harrow Technical College in Harrow, England; and the Louvre Free School of Art in Paris, France. He has been professionally involved in fine art, commercial art, and technical illustration for more than 45 years. His experience as an art instructor includes oil, watercolor, acrylic, colored pencil, and pastelwith subjects ranging from landscapes to portraits and wildlife. He has also authored a number of art instruction books, including several popular Walter Foster titles. As a renowned master of color, Bill has conducted numerous "Color Mixing and Theory" workshops in Los Angeles and San Diego, California. His expertise in color theory also led him to author and illustrate an educational series of 11 articles entitled, "Color in Perspective" for Painting Magazine. Additionally he has been consulted for his color expertise on telescope and satellite images for national space programs, and he has served as a color and pigment consultant for several artists paint manufacturers. Bill's work also includes the creation of background sets for films, model making, animated cartoons, and animated films for computer mockup programs.

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4.7 out of 5

1,628 global ratings

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Sandra's Artbox

great informational book

Reviewed in the United States on September 6, 2023

Verified Purchase

as I suspected when I ordered this, I found my first one, a day after this arrived. Kept it just incase I organized again.

2 people found this helpful

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arbre kennedy

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on August 27, 2023

Verified Purchase

Perfect color mixing reference for my portrait painting.

Helpful

🔹 Catrinka 🔹

Recipes for all different ethnic skin tones...and much more

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2012

Verified Purchase

This book is a great "starting point" to keep on hand. While most artists who regularly paint portraits have their own favorite blends of colors to create the complexion they're trying to achieve, this book offers recipes for numerous ethnic skin tones that may be less familiar. And not just the "recipe" for the medium value for each of specific skin tones. For each identified skin color, a recipe for a "master" skin tone recipe is provided along with:

- numerous additional mixes for light, medium, and dark values
- the highlight value
- warm shadow color
- cool shadow color
- appropriate graying color

A number of different ethnic complexions are represented in the book...and some with multiple options. For example, there are 3 options for Caucasian (creamy, cool tone, and ruddy) and 2 for Asian (light and medium tones).

A small section of the book deals with mixing eye color and offers suggestions for paint blends for various parts of the iris, the highlight, and the pupil (and, no, the pupil isn't just "black" paint in any of the eye colors represented). A small hair section provides recipes for main color, shadows, and highlights for 16 different hair shades.

Of course, the final mixed colors will differ somewhat for all of us since there is a fair amount of color variance in the paints produced by the various manufacturers...even in the very top of the line, professional makers. Still, I find it a handy point to start with some complexions with which I'm less familiar. That can be a big savings of wasted, expensive oil colors.

There is a section at the back for watercolor recipes. As I only use oil (and occasionally acrylic), I can offer no opinion on what value this book might be to watercolorists.

9 people found this helpful

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Ramon l Colon Correa

Nice

Reviewed in the United States on June 14, 2023

Verified Purchase

A very easy ,practical and fast method of understanding how color works in painting . Specially in human skin.

One person found this helpful

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Judith Sadows

Skin tone always difficult so this should help

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2022

Verified Purchase

Working on my portrait painting

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John B. Fisher

Excellent Portrait Painting Resource

Reviewed in the United States on July 2, 2016

Verified Purchase

As I started to tackle the challenges of portrait painting, I quickly discovered that getting just the right color for skin tones is one of the big challenges. At least that had been an issue. Sure I looked at various websites and blog posts. It's not that there were not any recipes. The problem was that none of the recipes were coherent our explained how to modify them to fit your own artistic needs.

That was the case until I found this book. The author provides a framework of how to paint various skin tones. He shows how to mix colors to get exactly the tone needed for the subject of the portrait and for the overall painting.

The author is so detail oriented, I suspect he might have had some engineering in his background. But that level of detail only makes it easier to adapt and use his basic approach.

For example, don't happen to have Indian Yellow? Perhaps you can mix a color that's close. And off we go. Within minutes,I mixed colors that were more pleasing than those I had spent hours trying to mix.

I don't actually use the plastic measuring guide provided with the book. I prefer mixing the colors in my palette. I learn more each time I try to reproduce the correct colors.I also enjoy the "happy accidents" that often occur. I'm fairly certain that my visual cortex often guides me away from a specific color toward one that better fits with the overall portrait.

7 people found this helpful

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Dug

Need years resolution …paint again

Reviewed in the United States on March 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

I my younger days , I was an artist , than I got a real job. 30 years later, I’ve decided to paint again. This book is like a cheat sheet ( life saver ) great help in color mixing, worth it.

4 people found this helpful

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Jorge Colon

Great book. Arrived in excellent condition.

Reviewed in the United States on February 7, 2023

Verified Purchase

The book arrived well package. The book is very good quality and was delivered in new condition. Gret value for the price.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Barb Floyd

-

Reviewed in Canada on October 16, 2023

Verified Purchase

It’s very informative

Márcia Ferreira

Ajuda a entender como obter os diferentes tons de pele

Reviewed in Brazil on December 8, 2021

Verified Purchase

Descreve como misturar as cores e obter vários tons de pele.

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Diego G.

Una muy buena guía

Reviewed in Mexico on August 23, 2021

Verified Purchase

El libro viene con una paleta de colores para los distintos tonos de piel y para diferentes medios (acuarela, óleo, gouache), debes guiarte primero por el color base en la parte superior de cada página y combinarlo en distintas proporciones con los colores que están en la parte inferior de cada página, cuesta al principio entender el método pero poco a poco se adquiere el sentido.

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Isabela

Doubtful

Reviewed in the Netherlands on June 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

The book has a good idea behind but frankly, this kind of books make the life more difficult for inexperienced artists. It is so much easier to get your three primaries (different ones) and play with them for hours, discovering all the possibilities. Make your own references. This book can really be only a suggestion for mixes but never a reference to rely by on.

Mrs M.

Useful little book for colour mixing!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2023

Verified Purchase

An a beginner/intermediate artist is useful to have this book. It helps me to have an idea of what to look for and how to archive the right shades and tones in my sketches and paintings. I would recommend it.

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