Thought I would go ahead and give everyone the heads up on a new small tutorial. This will be on making realistic skin tones. You may want to get a few things ready if you want to try to work along with me on this. You'll need a head made out of polymer clay (flesh tone) already cured, some acrylic paints, doesn't matter what kind. You can get expensive and use the artist acrylics in the tubes, or the bottled craft paints as long as they are acrylic. You'll also need some makeup sponge wedges. You can pick these up anywhere you buy makeup, and probably the only time you will ever find me in the make up isle.
You may also want to buy some fine tipped brushes, and a larger brush for applying the paint. I use paint brushes but only minimally and for details. The colors you will need in the acrylic paints will be Burnt Sienna, Burnt Umber, Prussian Blue and Alizarin Crimson. Since this will be a TEST in a sense, to give you the feel of painting realistic skin tones, you will want to create a head that is large enough to see what you are doing. Also don't put so much work into it that if you totally screw up (which is difficult the way I do it), you won't end up totally depressed.
I had to learn how to do this on my own. The first ever piece I did in polymer, I ended up leaving in the oven WAY too long. In fact I think it ended up in the oven through the entire Super Bowl. It was rather crispy critters so I tried to save it by painting it. Ended up looking like the make up job my 10th grade English teacher always wore. I was always amazed that her face cracked as she talked, the make up was so thick! Anyway the sculpt was ruined, looked horrid, and the paint filled in all of the creases and detail that I put on it. I sitll have it but only because it was my first piece.
Now if you are making fairies that look like super models, this technique won't really work for you. Make up tends to make skin look flawless, evens out skin tone, and that is not my intention when I paint. I don't wear make up, and my dolls tend to look like me. Especially the old wrinkly one.
Natural skin tones however are not one color. Skin is not opaque, but translucent, which is why we use the translucent flesh tones when we sculpt people, fairies etc. Skin gets it's coloring not by the surface, but by all the "stuff" we have under the top translucent layers of skin. Fatty areas tend to make our skin look slightly yellower in the areas that have a lot of fat. Veins and capillaries tend to give our skin other colors, like blues and reds. In older people, they tend to have liver spots. All of these things are not sitting on the top of the skin, they are underneath and in order to make realistic skin tones, we have to build up layers upon layers of VERY thin, translucent paint. NOT thick opaque layers! Blushing is great, but also needs to be more translucent, not opaque. After taking a shower in the next few nights get out and really look your skin over. What colors do YOU see? What areas tend to be darker, or lighter, bluer, or redder?
Now find some clay, sculpt a head! Once again, make sure it is fairly large, because it will be easier to do for the first time that way. Once you learn the technique, you can use your knowledge to make things smaller in the size you normally work in. I would say at least 2 inches across. Make sure to cure it completely before you start. If I have left anything out here, let me know, ask questions or whatever as I go along with the tutorial, and remember, the only dumb question is the one left unasked!
Painting tutorial (Read 30212 times)
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