Crystal Despain-
Skin Deep: The Secret to painting Luminous Skin Tones Workshop
Note: Refunds minus the credit card transaction fee are available up to four weeks before the beginning of the workshop. After that, the student must find a replacement and negotiate payment with the replacement. If you need to cancel, contact us. The team may be able to help find a replacement. Please see the LAA Cancellation and Refund Policy.
LAA Members: Use your member code during check-out for a discounted price. The member code can be found in your membership confirmation email and any LAA newsletter.
Skin Deep: The Secret to painting Luminous Skin Tones
Dec 13, 2025 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM
Instructor: Crystal Despain
LOUISVILLE ART CENTER
801 Grant Ave, Louisville, CO 80027
Member $55
Non-member $75
Unlock the secrets to painting vibrant, realistic skin tones in this immersive one-day workshop! Whether you’re a beginner or an experienced artist looking to refine your technique, this class will guide you through a simplified approach to painting a variety of skin tones!
Through hands-on exercises and instructor demonstrations, you’ll learn:
- How to mix a full range of skin tones using a limited primary-based palette (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow)
- Using Opaque and transparent paint to create depth
- Understanding light, shadow and temperature
- Avoiding common pitfalls (like dull mixtures, or mis-matched light and shadow tones)
Crystal Despain
Crystal is a nationally awarded painter and dedicated teacher specializing in portraiture and figurative works in oil.
She has two goals for a final product – that it will draw a viewer in from across a room, and that it will keep them engaged once they get there.
In the journey to achieve those goals lies the challenge of unrelenting observation, of trial and mistrial, mind bending intellectual focus and creative exploration.
Crystal is working to marry her love of realism and classical representation with more modern elements of exaggerated value shapes and graphic elements.
Crystal studied under several renown artists such as Tina Garrett, Casey Childs, Keith Bond, and Joseph Lorusso
Crystal lives in Colorado with her husband, 5 sons, and sole female companion- a mischievous whippet named Indie.
She is the current Colorado State ambassador for the Portrait Society of America.
Some of Crystal’s work:
MATERIALS:
PAINT: Limited palette- (you can get by in the workshop with these)
- Phthalocyanine Turquoise
- Cadmium yellow medium or pale (I use Windsor Newton pale)
- Quinacridone magenta
- White
- Phthalocyanine green
- Transparent oxide (brown or red)
- Black (I use Ivory)
My full palette- these are not all required, this is an advanced palette that fits my personal style:
- Ultramarine Blue by williamsburg
- Phthalocyanine Turquoise by Michael Harding
- Quinacridone magenta (cool red) by williamsburg
- Chinese vermillion or cad red vermillion (warm red)
- Cadmium yellow pale Windsor Newton (warm Yellow)
- Cadmium yellow lemon (cool yellow)
- Transparent brown oxide
- Amethyst by Michael Harding Indian Yellow Deep by Winsor Newton
- Pyrrole Orange transparent by Holbein
- Phthalocyanine Green by M Graham
- Pale violet by Michael Harding
- Titanium white by Williamsburg
- porcelain white by Williamsburg
- Ivory black Williamsburg (3-4)
Other:
- (3) 8×10 canvases for value/color studies. I like to paint on linen panels.Try to avoid anything really cheap/low quality.
- A variety of medium and small (not tiny) Brushes. My favorites are filbert eclipse (size 2,4) and extra long combers (size ⅝ and ⅜) from Rosemary. I also like their ivory long filberts and Ivory long flats.
- Solvent (OMS) Medium- Galkyd (will help everything dry faster for the workshop). (In my studio I prefer Oleogel – order from Natural Pigments website)
- Palette- whatever you like to use is fine, I use gray glass – New Wave POSH on amazon)
- Make sure your palette is flat with plenty of space for mixing color.
- Palette knife for mixing color-
- med sized Paper towels – I use Viva
- Brush cleaner (I like trekel’s linseed oil cleaner)
- Something for note taking
Skin Deep: The Secret to painting Luminous Skin Tones
with Crystal Despain
Dec 13, 2025
Member $55
Non-member $75
LAA Members: To get the discounted price, use your member code during check-out. The Member Code can be found in your membership confirmation email and any LAA Newsletter.
Questions? Go to the Contact Us form and be sure to specify this workshop with your question.