HOW DO I PAINT A HUMAN BUST?: Paint realistic skin-tones ETC?

I used a mix of orange and white. Depending on the amount of orange or white you'll get different tones. You'll have to experiment to get it right. Anybody else have a better suggestion?

Ok...orange and white. Mix it till I get skin. Sounds far too easy ha ha. Thanks mate. Really appreciated.

Anyone else? Go on...share your secrets.

Happy to drown in in thousands of layers. What about application?

Pretend you are talking to someone who has never painted before....hey hang on that's me lol

Best
TAZ

heres a good tutorial...

TheEffectsLab.com :: View topic - Paint job tutorial

I would not do only orange as a base. I've seen far too many busts that look, well . . . orange. Like an oompa loompa or someone who uses Tan in a Can.

I've also seen a lot of busts that were too peach or too brown. What you should do is switch up different colors. That tutorial shows layering and how you can achieve a translucent effect. Good stuff.

I find that a base coat of a pale fleshe acrylic with oil paints on top works best for me. Airbrushing is really tough to master. Ii have gotten my best results using oil paints. oil paint is almost like applying makeup and you can achieve great subtle shading. As far as price, I just bought a set of artists oil paints in small tubes, goes a really long way, you really don't need a lot, for about 30$. Just make sure u have nice brushes.

jiggawho85 said:

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heres a good tutorial...

TheEffectsLab.com :: View topic - Paint job tutorial

That's a great airbrush tutorial but if you don't have a great compressor, with pressure control gauge and a micro Airbrush there is no way you'll be able to achieve that kind of detail.

I use a mix of airbrushing and stipling with a brush to achieve my skin tones. And it's several different colors I use. I mix my own flesh tones from raw umber, burnt sienna , white and raw sienna.. some yellow and pink is also used here and there.

Never used an airbrush before, I do all my busts using a paintbrush. I've found though that you can get really good results from using your fingertips - both acrylics and enamels bend well this way and you don't get any brushstrokes.

Personally, I tend to use a light pink/peach acrylic ("Elf Flesh" from the Games Workshop) for the base layer. I then do a light wash of something in the pink spectrum, but at the redder end, over everything. Then I add different shades of red/brown/purple/blue in layers by first stippling the paint on in small areas, and then patting down the freshly applied paint with my fingertip to feather it out and blend it. It's really about adding lots of different shades in layers to build it up until it looks right.

For stubble I stipple on a light grey (thinned) and again blend it with my fingertips. I then go over that with a skin tone, doing the same again, to blend it/soften it more.

You can see how building up the layers of colour changes the Arnie's face over time in my thread here: http://www.therpf.com/f62/schwarzene...paintup-92780/

I know you're not there yet, but a tip - the hair work is CRUCIAL! I know it takes time, but hand lay the eyebrow hairs. And don't use false eyelashes on male bust - again, lay the hairs by hand. And with the gregory wig, once it's cut to style, add hairgel. It looks SO much better than the wig as-is which looks too dry. And bend some of the hair down and glue it to the bust in front of the wig edge (then curve it back again once the glue's dried) to hide the wig weave - it LOOKS like a wig otherwise.

Not that I'm an expert but I use only acrylics on my busts and tried an airbrush once and just found it incredibly frustrating and hard to use. What I do basically is give it a nice orange (the color I use is called Roman Stucco - looks like a fake and bake tan). Then wherever there might be stubble I dry/stipple brush gray (and maybe a little in the bags of the eyes and any other deep crevices). After that I take a lighter skin tone (as close to the skin tone I'm trying to match) and go over the whole thing little by little with more dry brushing until the darker orange and gray are faded out to the levels that look right. It usually takes me a lot of tweaking and layers to get the look I want, but basically the same method works for me every time, just using different levels of lightness and darkness. I know some of the better bust painters here put little freckles, liver spots, etc. all over the skin, which definitely adds a lot of realism but I dont have the patience for that, LOL.

Here is an easy way to do skin tones. I use acrylic paints in tubes or tatoo inks for makeup.

List of colours
Titanium white

Yellow Ochre - or Burnt Sienna depending on skin tone. yellow for yellow based skin and Burnt Sienna for reddish complexions.

Warm Red - cadmium red

Ultra marine Blue

Mix the ochre with white to get a base tone, then slowly add some red till you get a skin tone that looks to peachy. Then take a little of the Ultramarine and add a quarter of the amount you think, otherwise the mix will go an aqua green.

The blue will remove the peachy tone and make it more neutral.

amfx74 said:

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Here is an easy way to do skin tones. I use acrylic paints in tubes or tatoo inks for makeup.

List of colours
Titanium white

Yellow Ochre - or Burnt Sienna depending on skin tone. yellow for yellow based skin and Burnt Sienna for reddish complexions.

Warm Red - cadmium red

Ultra marine Blue

Mix the ochre with white to get a base tone, then slowly add some red till you get a skin tone that looks to peachy. Then take a little of the Ultramarine and add a quarter of the amount you think, otherwise the mix will go an aqua green.

The blue will remove the peachy tone and make it more neutral.

This closest to the formula I was taught, but I'd have to go back and look it up. Been a few yesar since I've done a bust. But I do have a couple to do, so will be worth my while to dig up the recipe.

But to me, the key to realism is detail, detail, detail. Like anything we paint (1:1 prop, scale model, bust) the more colors we use, the more effects we employ, the more detail we add, the better it looks...

Saved this link once. May be useful to you.

skin painting

Hi Taz, sorry if I was unclear. I meant that after you apply your acrylic paint flesh color base coat, seal with dulcoat then apply your oil paints on top of that. You can't mix oil and acrylic.

Something you can do to achieve that translucent effects is to seal each layer with liquitex Matte sealer, and also thin out each layer with it too.

This picture is a 1/6th scale head, but I used that method with it.

A airbrush is not for everyone but it works for me... if you decide to upgrade, you should go with a Iwata Eclipse HP, that's the one I have and it works great.

oo, just found this thread. must mark it so I can ask questions when I have time.

Ok, in Amazing figure modeler #45, there's a fantastic paint up of a Howard Senft James Bond. In the article, Don Pierce says:

2. Mottle a mixture of Polytranspar “Whitetail Ear Light” as a foundation for the overall ‘blotchy’ look.

3. continue to build “blotchy” effect with a purple mixture: “whitetail ear light”, “Sailfish Blue” “Blood red” and a LOT of Liquitex “matte medium” Thinned with Polly S airbrush thinner


What I'm wondering, what is this exactly? Is it the squiggle method mentioned at the other link posted here?

"Mottle"? just curious.

The squiggle method is airbrushing tiny s shaped patterns all over the surface, as if to mimic a pattern of blood vessels under the skin. Mottling is a pattern almost as if you sponged the paint on, that is the pattern mottling creates. Hope I explained it clearly.

chuckyAPP said:

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The squiggle method is airbrushing tiny s shaped patterns all over the surface, as if to mimic a pattern of blood vessels under the skin. Mottling is a pattern almost as if you sponged the paint on, that is the pattern mottling creates. Hope I explained it clearly.

So basically spongeing on the paint is mottling or is it done by airbrush?

Qrest Fourstar said:

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So basically spongeing on the paint is mottling or is it done by airbrush?

Its all done with the airbrush in the articles that were sited above. Really difficult to do with out nice airbrush and pressure control on your air compressor and of course some practice.