Ok, on to the materials. Here is a pic of some of the materials I may or may not be using, but put them together so you can see the options.
 

 
You will see two different types of paints here. One is the bottled acrylic paint and the other is the tube type.  The bottled and the tube acrylic have several major differences. One is price. A small bottle of the Folk Art brand bottled paint is about .79 cents, versus over $4.00 for a tube of the Grumbacher Acrylic which I happened upon on sale. If you are going to be doing an acrylic painting, it would be well worth it to use the high dollar stuff, but we aren't going to be really painting anything on, just giving everything a wash of color. It will also be sealed later, which of course is entirely up to you. To be honest, I use the bottled acrylic 90% of the time. I find it works fine, and like I said earlier, I have had one piece, a polymer head hanging on my rear view mirror for over 3 years, in direct sunlight, in a closed vehicle in the South USA where we have 105 degree days for days at a time, and it hasn't faded one bit. If it is on a doll in a curio cabinet out of direct sunlight for years and years, it won't fade for a LONG time if at all!
 
The second and very important difference between the two is the viscosity. The bottled paint is watered down and will puddle quite a bit when squeezed onto a flat surface. The tube paint is much more thick, and will keep its shape when squeezed out onto a flat surface. If you use bottled paints, you won't need to add as much water as you will if you use the tube paints. This is one of the reasons why the bottled types are so much cheaper. There is a lot more water already in the mix, which makes it difficult to do acrylic paintings with them (but I have done that with the bottled paints as well).
 
Another thing is paintbrushes. Well you can just about do it without any brushes at all, but you will need at least one very fine brush, and it would be good to have a large one as well to cover an area quickly.  I bought these today at Michaels, and got packages fairly cheap. A whole selection of sizes for anywhere from $8.00 to $4.00. You can buy cheaper ones as well, but the cheaper they are the quicker they will wear out or leave tons of loose hairs all over your sculpt. I prefer the synthetic ones, because they do tend to loose less if they are cheaper brushes.
 
Another biggy are these little sponges. I love them, and you won't catch my studio out of them. You will see just how much I use them later on in the tutorial. You can buy them at any drug store or department store, and often can get them at about $1-$2 for a package They are used for applying or taking off make up, are wedge shaped and have very fine pores so they won't leave the surface uneven. I use them for removing paint and also for applying it at times.  
 
I also have a brush holder that makes life a bit easier for me. It keeps the brushes in the water, but don't bend the bristles. Totally a luxury, but it only costs about $5 at Michaels. I also put the wooden piece I found at Michaels today in the pic, which will make a cool base to a future bust. Only cost about $2.50.  
 
Other things I will probably use are lots of water for thinning, possibly some rubbing alcohol for clean up, rags, and liquid Sculpey (See the critter tutorial for a photo of the liquid Sculpey, completely optional).  
 
Hope to get started in earnest tomorrow!

Good start Julie.............

Ok, I lied, ended up farting around outside most of the day, and didn't get around to the tutorial yet, but I promise I will have some posted by either tonight or tomorrow afternoon. I made the mistake of ordering some strawberry plants, and they got her about a week before I thought they would, so had to get them in the ground before I ended up with 50 dead plants! It's a lot easier doing tutorials in the middle of the winter because I never go outside if the temps are below 60 degrees. I hibernate, but I guess the Spring fever hit me today. lol

No prob; we know you're good for it!  
 
My husband and I got spring fever on Saturday and cleaned up the yard... My muscles still haven't forgiven me for that...  

Julie the head is fabulous! Such charcter in your work that so far is not under my fingers.. I love that head and yes I want it ~LOL!  
 
Can hardly wait for this tutorial you are the master of them~
Patttee

Ok here we go. First of all some tips on making this go well for you. First of all, make sure your sculpt is COMPLETELY cool. Don't make the mistake I made the first time I tried this, and wait until it is cool enough to handle, but still warm, because the paint will dry WAY too fast. Also don't try this under two very hot lamps like I am trying to do. It makes the paints dry quick too, and trying to take photos, paint, and work fast enough to keep it from drying is a major pain in the....well you know.
 
Also it is a good idea to thoroughly wash your sculpt before trying to paint. Sometimes the oils in your hands during sculpting or handling after baking will cause the water based paint to separate. A good way to prevent this is to use a soft toothbrush and some dishwashing liquid, I prefer Dawn or something that really is tough on grease.  Scrub it everywhere gently, and rinse thoroughly with water. Allow to dry completely before starting.
 
Here is where we are now, and I'll repost this later at the end so you can see the difference.
 

 
I use a container I bought from the store used for putting food in with separate compartments. It works great for mixing paint, and is deep enough to where I can add plenty of water and not spil it everywhere. I add a bit of paint first, and then add a LOT of water.
 

 
Using a brush, I make sure it is mixed thoroughly. Be sure there aren't bits of thicker paint floating around in the mixture.  
 

 
Notice that the brush I am using has white bristles and you can still kind of see it through the paint it is so thin. You want a watery mixture, not something that is thick. If you are using tube paints, you will need to mix in more water. It's better to have too much water than not enough, because what I am doing here is basically staining the polymer, not painting it. The more paint you have in the mix, the darker the stain will be.  It's better to go through this and find you need to add more paint, than to get done and see you should have used more water, and have to go through taking it off with alcohol.
 

 
Now here is where you need to work quickly! Apply liberal amounts of paint all over the sculpture.
 


 
Using a rag, wipe off the entire sculpt, You can't wipe it all off, so don't worry about rubbing it too much.  Pay special attention to the creases.
 


 
Using some of the sponge wedges, get into the corners of the eyes, behind the ears, inside the ears, in the nostrils, and all the wrinkles! Our skin is not darker in the creases, the creases themselves give shadows, and if you have sculpted your piece with enough detail, that is all you need to make it look correct. Leaving paint in the grooves and crevices, just makes it look unnatural.  
 



 
Inevitably, there will be areas that you cannot get it all out. Ears and nostrils are a major headache when it comes to this. At this point I will take a clean brush and wet it with plain water, and swirl it around in any areas that still have paint pooling in it. Don't forget behind the ears!
 


 
Now using plain water, I go over the entire piece, this will help make things more even.  
 


 
Now dry it off again using a rag.
 


 
Now this may seem like a waste of time and energy, because you won't be able to tell a whole lot of difference, but we aren't done yet.  The trick to making it look real, is to build up layers, minute layers of color.  This is why painting on thick opaque layers doesn't look right.  Look at the difference between what it looks like now and what it looked like at the beginning:
 
Before:

After:

 
If you want more color, like someone is more tanned, you can add more layers of the same color. Don't try mixing the paint with less water, just allow what you have to dry, and you can use a hair dryer to speed things up if you wish, and do another wash. I may be doing this several times with increasingly less paint and more water later on. Remember this is just a base coat, and the very beginning, but notice already the slight difference between the before and after. We will be adding a lot more, barely noticeable things later on down the road, but all of it will add up to give the illusion of real skin.
 
I'll post more tomorrow!

Looking good!
 
I do kind of the same thing with my wood carvings but I want the wrinkles, cracks and crevasses to hold onto the paint! In some circles it's called "antiquing".
 
                      V link V
Here is my 'Sculpture Gallery' which contains mostly wood carvings finished with Boiled Lineseed Oil and Artist's Oil Paints. I mix it up real thin, paint it on and wipe it off being careful not to remove it from the details!