Painting Skin Tones with Ramon Hurtado

Does painting skin tones feel like an impossible mystery? Like there’s some secret alchemy only the great painters of the past understood and that allowed them paint luminous, lifelike flesh?

Well, in this workshop, we’ll dive deep and demystify that process!

By learning a few simple principles, you’ll see how the impossible becomes not only achievable but repeatable. We’ll study the essential properties of flesh – translucency, reflectivity, unity and hue shifts – to understand how light interacts with different complexions to create the endless variety we see in each other.

From there, we’ll build a clear system: starting from a base tone, adding modifiers, and keeping palette organization simple and flexible. You’ll learn when to use neutrals, when to push saturation, and how to balance unity with color variety. The result is a practical, reliable way to capture the beautiful complexity of flesh, across all skintones and lighting conditions. This applies equally to working digitally or traditionally!