Drawing and painting: Skin and hair

by Tissa Hewavitarane

One of the many problems the portrait painter has to face is dealing with what are virtually two opposites in terms of texture. The bark of a tree or the fur of an animal is a relatively uniform texture, but human skin is entirely different from human hair giving the artist the task of finding a technique that can equally well express them.

If you were to use a meticulous dry brush watercolour technique for the hair and a fluid wet-in-wet for the face, the effect would be bizarre and unpleasing though each of these techniques would be perfectly appropriate in the context of a single texture.

Skin

Of all the textures discussed, the skin is the most subtle and elusive and painting it is one of the greatest of all challenges to the painter's skills.

The skin is not a homogeneous and opaque substance, it is reflective and to some extent translucent, affected not only by what is around it - even the weather but also by the bone, blood and muscle beneath.

The most dramatic changes in the texture of skin are wrought by time. The skin of a baby or a young child is soft and "peachy", while that of an old person, especially one who has spent a lifetime working out of doors, can often resemble leather or hide. But this is not all, the texture also varies according to the part of the body. In an adult, hands and faces, constantly exposed to the air, are nearly always rougher than the torso, covered by its protective layer of clothing for most of the time - something which those who paint and draw the nude must often have noticed.

Skin stretched tightly over a bone, such as the face or forehead, is smoother and more reflective than that with a substantial layer of flesh and fat below. These are just some of the differences you can readily observe in any one person. The ever-changing appearance of skin has fascinated painters for hundreds of years. The differences between individuals in terms of facial expressions and skin colour and texture were of paramount importance.

Important clue

Even when you drawing rather than painting you need to be aware of the colours of flesh, because colour can provide important clues about texture. An older skin is usually darker in colour than that of a young person.

An even more important clue, however, is the quality of highlights in describing texture, and the principle is exactly the same of skin, though the effects are rather more subtle.

On oily skins the highlights will usually be brighter than drier "dustier" skins, where it will be more diffused. When painting look out for these highpoints of light as they are extremely important indicators of form as well as texture.

They usually occur at corners or where a plane changes direction, for example on the forehead where the two planes of the head meet, or the top of the lip, where the flesh of the lip begins to turn.

The soft skin and rounded limbs of babies and young children requires careful blending, whatever the medium used. A dry-brush technique would be suitable for a short beared or perhaps a mixture of water colour and pencil. A complex, elaborate texture can often be simplified by indirect lighting.

Hair

There is such a range of textures and styles seen on the human head that it is impossible to generalise about them, but there are some points to bear in mind when you are drawing and painting.

The most important is to ensure that you relate the hair to the head itself. This sounds obvious, but if your subject has an elaborate hairstyle it is only too easy to become so involved in the intrcasies of curls and waves tat you forget about the shape of the skull beneath and the way hair relates to the face.

Start by blocking the main masses and then pay careful attention to the rhythms of the hair. The way the hair flows and falls into a series of gentle waves was a source of particular fascination to Leonardo da Vinci, the reputed portrait painter, who saw it as analogous to the movement of water.

In painting hair look for the weight of the hair, too, as this is important in giving shape to the style, even in the case of short hair. All hairstylists know that thick, heavy hair holds its shape better than thin, hair, and the more shape it has the easier it is to paint-you can simplify the forms, using long sweeping brush strokes that follow the flow of the hair.

Sheen

The final quality to look out for is the sheen of the hair. Thin, frizzy hair is trickier because it does not always follow the shape of the head very precisely, and is in general more demanding in terms of technique.

Dark oily hair will have very pronounced highlights, thick dry hair diffused ones, and thin dry or frizzy hair almost no recognisable highlights.

For the painter this is the most important characteristic of all the highlight giving the vital textural clues. You will probably have to practise to get the tones and colours correct and the results could be very effective.