I really don’t intend to become a portrait artist. But it seems its all I do right now. I have a painting on my easel and cannot finish it because the portraits keep getting in the way! Having said that if I could ever master portraits in colour I would be very happy. For some reason the colour defeats me completely. I have bought more tubes of paint looking for an elusive skin tone – yellows and reds and greens and violets and a dozen more colours in between. Every portrait I like I ask what the recipe is for the skin and go and buy the colours suggested but it must be the way I mix because I never end up with anything remotely like the colour I wanted to emulate!

Does anyone have a good skin tone recipe?