Yes, I know all the art-school stuff about additive and subtractive colour. (Black is either the complete absence of colour or the sum of all of them.) I don’t mean that. I mean, “How do you paint a person with black skin?” The answer is quite interesting.
The composition on which I am working at the moment has at its centre a man with black skin.* I have developed the habit recently of making sure that I use live models whenever I am painting the human figure, because my figure-drawing without a model is iffy. So I approached a friend of mine from Antigua, and he very kindly agreed to pose for a couple of reference photographs. Unfortunately we conducted the session in artificial light. Although the figure-drawing part of the exercise is fine the details of his facial features have not come out too clearly, partly because of the quality of the light and partly because of the very dark colour of his skin. Not deterred, I resorted to the internet and downloaded a picture of Lenny Henry that I thought would help to check on and qualify my own resources. (My friend will certainly find that hilarious.) I have to say that its has all worked out very well indeed, and I’m getting on well with the picture. I did encounter an additional problem, however, that will be of general interest. What colour is “black”?
As I think I mentioned in a recent blog, it can really be quite important to limit the use of black in painting. How should I go about painting the skin-colour of a person of Afro-West-Indian origin? I asked myself what kind of colour-mix would answer my needs. My first port-of-call was the shelf-full of art books I have accumulated.** Not surprisingly they often carried advice about how to mix flesh tones. To my amazement, however, they all assumed that the subjects of painting had white skin. Not a single one gave any consideration to the possibility that the subject of a portrait might by Afro-West-Indian.
I have made my own experiments, and it is working out quite well, using a dark blue in many circumstances to darken the tone of the skin, and discovering that a convincing colour even for a “black” man depends upon quite a high proportion of red. I am still feeling my way with this one, but it has made me think.
Over dinner tonight I shared the experience with my wife, and she told me an amusing anecdote that is apposite on this occasion. Her sister once related how a close friend of hers had never encountered the second person singular while learning French in school. He had been told by the teacher that it was unlikely that he would ever know a frenchman well enough to need it. Perhaps the art manuals I’ve accumulated all share the premise that none of their readers is ever likely to be sufficiently interested in a black subject to want to paint them.
*I know that these days many people prefer to refer to “persons of colour”, but believe me, my model has very dark skin.
**Old habits die hard, and my former tendency as an academic to acquire too many books is perhaps the only surviving characteristic of my previous career.
An interesting one John. Ask anyone black about their experiences of buying “flesh coloured” products such as plasters, underwear, etc. I don’t whether to laugh or cry over the fact that we are so visible yet invisible sometimes!
I suspected it might be like that.