the skin is in raw sienna. we were told that traditionally white is built up from other colors but we could put the son's robe in white, just pure white. it happened I had about three extra hours of time on my hands so instead I started him in raw sienna, and added white and white and more white until the top layer of the robe was white. Often they build up from dark blue, though she said a person could build up from any color. I wanted to dress the flesh so to speak, so I started with the raw sienna.