Free Skin Tone Mixing Guide
Sample the light, halftone, shadow, reflected light and accents of any portrait reference and mix them the way portrait painters do: one mother colour for the skin, and every zone made by adding to it. Each zone shows how it shifts in value and temperature from the mother, and the whole plan prints as a palette card. Works for every skin tone, because the method is the same for all. Exports PNG and PDF. Free, with no sign-up, and your picture never leaves your device.
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Mother colour.One pile of up to 4 paints matched to the skin's halftone or its average, in whole parts.
Zones from the mother.Each zone as 8 parts of mother plus counted parts of one or two paints, with a direct recipe for comparison.
Value and temperature shifts.How far each zone moves from the mother: Munsell value steps, warmer or cooler, greyer or more intense.
Palette card PDF.The portrait with numbered zones, the mothers and every zone's recipe and shift on one printable card.
- Free
- No sign-up
- Runs in your browser: your image never leaves your device
What is the mother colour method for skin tones?
The mother colour method mixes one base pile for the body colour of the skin, then makes every zone of the face, light, halftone, shadow and reflected light, by adding small amounts of other paints to that same pile. Because every zone shares the mother, the flesh stays related. This guide finds the mother and each addition.
How to use the Skin Tone Mixing Guide
The tool takes 6 steps, all on your device.
Drop in a portrait reference (it never leaves your device) or try the Portrait sample.
Pick a palette: Zorn's four colors, a classical earth set, a modern warm/cool split, or your own paints from the paint mixing simulator.
Click the light zone of the face; the next zone becomes active each time. Sample the halftone, shadow, reflected light and accents the same way, or use the arrow keys and Enter.
Read the mother recipe, then each zone as the mother plus a few counted parts of one or two paints, with how it shifts from the mother and the direct recipe beside it.
If a zone is flagged as out of the mother's reach, switch to Light + shadow: the shadow sample gets its own mother and every zone uses whichever reaches it better.
Download the palette card as a PDF, or the marked-up portrait as a PNG.
What the Skin Tone Mixing Guide does
The Skin Tone Mixing Guide starts from a mother colour, counts each addition, and states the reach of the palette you chose.
Why a mother colour
Mixing each zone from scratch invites a patchwork of unrelated flesh notes. Mixing them from one pile keeps a shared hue family through the whole face, which is why the method is taught in portrait painting. It is one of our color tools for artists, which carry a color seen in a reference across to paint on the palette.
A mother beyond three paints
Flesh often needs every tube of a small palette. The mother is optimised over all of a palette's paints (up to eight) and kept to the four that matter, in whole parts up to 24. With Zorn's palette, a light-medium flesh color, #b48264, that no three-paint recipe gets closer to than 8.6 ΔE00 is matched by a four-paint mother within 1.1.
Counted additions
Each zone is the mother plus nothing, one paint in 1 to 24 parts, or two paints in 1 to 16 parts each, for every 8 parts of mother. An added paint must bring the mix at least 0.4 ΔE00 closer to earn its place, so recipes stay short.
Honest reach
A mother full of white cannot become a deep shadow. When a zone from the mother is more than 2 ΔE00 worse than a direct mix, the plan says so; with Light + shadow, the shadow sample gets its own mother and the shadow family comes from it.
Samples pores and glints cannot swing
Each sample averages a disk (1%, 2.5% or 5% of the picture's short side) in linear light, after dropping the darkest and lightest 15% of its pixels, so pores, hairs and glints do not swing it.
Kubelka-Munk mixing, on your device
Every mix is simulated with the Kubelka-Munk model through spectral.js, the same engine as the paint mixing simulator, in a background worker. Sampling, mixing and the exports run in your browser; the portrait is never uploaded.
For portrait painters who mix flesh zone by zone
Beginners, art students, working painters and art teachers mix flesh zone by zone from its recipes.
Beginners
Load the Portrait sample, sample the zones in order and see how little each zone differs from the mother.
Art students
Sample one face under Zorn and then Modern warm/cool, and compare what each mother needs.
Working painters
Print the palette card, mix the mother first and premix each zone from it before the sitting starts.
Art teachers
Show a class that each zone's shift, lighter and cooler or darker and warmer, is a small, countable change to one pile.
Skin is a method, not a color
A skin tone is not one paint color, whatever a flesh-tint tube suggests. What portraits share, across every complexion, is structure: a light zone, a halftone where the form turns, a shadow, reflected light bouncing back into it, and small high-chroma accents at the lips, ears and nostrils.
So instead of hunting for one recipe for 'skin', you sample those zones in your own reference and relate them to one another.
Mixing from the mother
Mix the mother first, in a pile big enough for the whole session. Then take a portion for each zone and add what the plan lists: '8 mother + 4 Titanium White + 1 Cadmium Red Medium' means eight parts of the pile, four of white and one of red. Because every zone starts from the same pile, adjusting the mother adjusts the whole face at once.
The shift line under each zone says what the addition does: how many Munsell value steps lighter or darker, whether warmer or cooler on the orange-blue axis the color temperature map uses, and whether greyer or more intense. Read it before you mix; it is the change your eye is looking for.
One mother or two
A single mother is enough when the light, halftone and reflected light stay in one family. Deep shadows usually do not: a mother with white in it cannot lose that white. Light + shadow gives the shadow sample a mother of its own, and each zone uses whichever mother reaches it better, a practice many portrait painters follow with a light pile and a shadow pile.
Mother matches decides what the main mother is mixed to: the halftone, often the truest local colour of the skin, or the average of light, halftone and shadow.
Choosing a palette
The Zorn preset, with Ivory Black standing in for blue, is the classic proof that four tubes can carry convincing flesh. Classical earth trades the cadmium red for earths and Ultramarine Blue. Modern warm/cool carries a warm and a cool of both yellow and red. Choose your own paints in the paint mixing simulator and they appear here as My paints.
No preset is tied to a skin tone. To judge a four-tube palette against a whole reference first, the limited palette previewer repaints the photo in the colors it can mix.
Further reading
The page below goes further into the ideas the Skin Tone Mixing Guide works with, and opens on the site named beside it.
- Portrait color and mixing, in depth (ArtisticMasterclass.com)
Tips from a working artist
From Sujith Puthran, artist and founder: what I actually do at the easel.
Sample the middle of a zone, not its edge; the sample drops pores and glints, but a forehead highlight is not the light zone.
Mix the mother generously: remixing it halfway through a sitting is a sure way to lose the harmony it gives.
Trust the reflected light to be darker than you think: its shift line usually says darker than the mother, not lighter.
On the Zorn palette, treat black as a blue: ivory black plus ochre makes the greens and cool greys the palette is known for.
Why your picture stays on your device
The Skin Tones is a program your browser downloads and runs by itself. When you choose a picture, the browser reads it from your files and does the work on your own phone or computer; no copy is sent to this site or to anyone else, and what you export is saved straight from the browser. That is why there is nothing to upload and nothing to sign up for. The privacy page says what the site does collect.
Questions about the Skin Tone Mixing Guide
The 5 questions below cover recipes, value and temperature shifts and the presets, then dark skin tones and privacy.
Recipes
How are the recipes calculated?
The recipes are calculated with the Kubelka-Munk model of the paint mixing simulator. The mother is optimised over the palette's paints and rounded to whole parts; each zone tries the mother alone and every addition of one or two paints in counted parts; the closest by CIEDE2000, with a small cost for each extra paint, wins.
What do the value and temperature shifts mean?
The value and temperature shifts each mean a measured difference: value is the difference in Munsell value (under 0.25 reads 'same value'). Temperature is the difference in warmth on an orange-blue axis in OKLab (under 0.008 reads the same, under 0.025 'slightly'). Intensity is the difference in OKLab chroma (under 0.01 the same, under 0.03 'slightly').
Which pigments does each palette preset contain?
Each palette preset contains its own pigments: Zorn (4 colors) holds Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red Medium and Ivory Black. Classical earth holds Titanium White, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Raw Umber, Ultramarine Blue and Ivory Black. Modern warm/cool holds Titanium White, Hansa Yellow Light, Cadmium Yellow Medium, Cadmium Red Medium, Alizarin Crimson, Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber.
Skin and privacy
Does this work for dark skin tones?
Yes, this works for dark skin tones, identically. The zone structure applies to every face and the mother comes from the colors you sample in your own reference. There is no default skin tone built into the tool.
Does the Skin Tone Mixing Guide upload my photo?
No, the Skin Tone Mixing Guide does not upload your photo. Nothing is sent to a server.
Sample the zones, mix the mother and build the face from it, with the plan printed beside your palette.
Free · No sign-up · Runs in your browser