Mixing recipe
How to mix fair skin tone
Target
#F5D5C0
Recipe mixes to #E5C6B1
A fair skin tone is almost all white, with just enough warmth that it does not read as paper. Naples Yellow warms the white without greening it, and a single part of Burnt Sienna brings in the pink-brown of skin. The box's Yellow Ochre is too strong a yellow for this; Naples is the gentler choice.
The recipe
This one reaches outside the common 10-tube starter box. The paints above are from Masstone’s full pigment library.
Step by step
Build the pile from the biggest, lightest component and work toward the strongest tinter. Check the pile against each swatch before moving on.
- Start with 9 parts Titanium Whitepile #F6F6F4
- Work in 2 parts Naples Yellowpile #F8EBC5
- Work in 1 part Burnt Siennapile #E5C6B1
Another route
Adding a part of Zinc White lands in the same place with a softer, more translucent white, useful if the mix is going on as a thin top layer. It is one more tube for no gain in accuracy. Stick with the three-paint mix unless you already have Zinc White out.
What goes wrong
The target is light enough that the parts are coarse: one part of Burnt Sienna in twelve is already the whole pink, and a second part makes it a tan. If the pile looks too dark, add white rather than trying to pull the sienna out. Titanium White dries slightly cooler in acrylic, which can leave fair skin looking grey; a speck more Naples fixes that.
Related colors
Results vary with brand, lighting and medium. Acrylic dries a touch darker than it looks wet. Treat this as a mixing aid, not a lab instrument: it tells you which tubes to reach for and roughly in what proportion. Fine-tune the last stretch by eye.