# Painting Skin Tone With Watercolors - review & insight | Gareth B. Davies

Source: https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/painting-skin-tone-with-watercolors/

[← All courses](https://garethbdavies.com/course-insights/) Illustration & Drawing · Quick win · Rated 7 /10

# Painting Skin Tone With Watercolors

 By Gareth B. Davies · Updated July 2026

 Melissa Lee · allow yourself to fail before you succeed

 · 27 min

 A tight 27-minute drill on mixing realistic skin tones with watercolor, not a portrait-drawing class in disguise.

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## A narrow, well-aimed target

 Melissa Lee's "Painting Skin Tone With Watercolors" does exactly what its title promises and nothing more. In under half an hour, the class isolates one specific problem, mixing convincing skin tones in a notoriously unforgiving medium, and refuses to get distracted by portrait drawing, facial anatomy, or composition. That restraint is the course's biggest strength and also its clearest limit. Students are told upfront to go elsewhere first if their drawing skills are shaky, and the class holds to that boundary throughout.

 The arc is simple and logical. It opens with a materials rundown that is refreshingly minimal: a handful of round brushes, masking fluid, cold press paper, and a short list of pigments (the primaries, burnt umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna, sepia). From there it moves into a short but genuinely useful detour on color theory, built around a college anecdote about being forced to name the "wrong" colors hiding inside a shadow on a white wall. It is a small story, but it does real work: it reframes skin not as one hue to match but as a layered combination, and it pushes students away from reflexively grabbing black for shading.

## Where the technique actually lives

 The middle two lessons are where the class earns its keep. The color combinations lesson lays out specific formulas by skin depth: burnt or raw sienna plus red or yellow for light tones, burnt umber added into that mix for mid tones, and sepia plus blue worked into sienna for deep tones. These are concrete, repeatable starting points rather than vague inspiration, which is exactly what this kind of class should deliver. The gradient practice that follows is more technical and more valuable long-term, walking through how water-to-pigment ratio controls value, why edges need to stay wet for a seamless blend, and why glazing over a fully dry layer works while going back into a half-dry one creates unwanted texture.

 The sphere activity is the course's best idea. Rather than sending students straight into a portrait, it has them paint three skin tones onto plain spheres, practicing masking fluid, undertone layering, shading, and highlighting with zero risk to an actual drawing. It is a smart, low-stakes rehearsal step that most tutorials of this length skip in favor of jumping straight to the finished piece.

 The final demo, painting a light-skinned and a dark-skinned portrait side by side, pays off that rehearsal by showing how differently the two require handling: dark skin holds more contrast and covers pencil lines faster, so shading has to be placed deliberately, while light skin stays more diffuse and forgiving.

## The honest limits

 At 27 minutes, the class is efficient but thin on repetition; each technique gets shown once, so students who want more mixing practice will need to generate their own drills beyond what's covered. The teaching also leans heavily on watching pigment behavior rather than on rules a student can memorize, which suits visual learners but leaves less to fall back on away from the paper. Framed correctly, as a focused color-mixing supplement rather than a full painting course, it delivers real, usable technique in very little time.

 The standout

 The sphere activity, where students practice three separate skin tone mixes and full layering and masking technique on a plain sphere before ever risking a real portrait.

## What you will learn

- · How to build light, mid, and dark skin tone mixes from a small palette of primaries plus burnt umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna, and sepia
- · How to paint a smooth light-to-dark gradient by controlling water-to-pigment ratio on the brush
- · How to layer washes correctly by letting each layer dry before adding the next, to avoid reactivating the pigment underneath
- · How to use masking fluid to protect highlight areas on more reflective, higher-contrast dark skin tones
- · How to choose non-obvious shading and highlight colors (purples, blues) instead of defaulting to black or gray
- · How watercolor's roughly 50 percent dry-down shift changes how bold you should go while the paint is wet

 Best for: Watercolor painters who already have solid portrait drawing skills and specifically want to solve the color-mixing side of skin tones.

 Skip it if: Beginners with no drawing foundation, or anyone hoping for guidance on facial proportion, likeness, or hair rendering.

 Helpful Examples Engaging Teacher Clarity of Instruction Actionable Steps

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