Here I present my best effort tutorial on head sculpt painting. I make no claims to be a master nor do I consider this to be the best way or even the only way, it's a system that works for me and hopefully you will find some of the following information to be useful in one way or another. So roll up your sleeve and let's get started!!
Oil paints work well for many reasons, first they are very easy to manipulate, they can be pushed and pulled, mistakes are a snap to fix. The major drawback is their slow dry time (usually about 2 weeks) but this is also their biggest advantage, time. You can take your time because your work wont dry up, and your paints will be useable for days! Additionally, oils are very subtle and can produce effects and subtlty not possible with other types. Don't be afraid to try these, you wont be sorry. If you follow my steps you will be quite successful in breathing life into your lifeless toys.
Materials:
Oil paints: These can be whatever brand you can find or prefer, I've found Windsor Newton and Grumbacher both work well for me. Don't ask me about the hybrid types that are acrylic based oils paints like Max2 etc., I have no experience with these and they may or may not work equally well. For basic figure painting the following colors are going to be needed.
Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Titanium White, Raw Umber, Burnt Umber, Chinese Red, Black, Thalo Blue and Permanent Light Green. No these tubes are not all that cheap but these paints will last you many many years of use.
Brushes: Don't skimp on the brushes! Purchase the best you can afford, they will serve you well. Select Fine Red Sable as our brushes of choice, other types will not serve well for this type of painting. I use #000 for fine lines, the remainer of my painting is done mostly with #1 and #2 types. You will also need a couple of other sizes in the range of #3 to #5. I suggest a wide soft brush perhaps 1/2 inch wide as well.
Thinner: Your going to need 2 types of thinner, Lacquer Thinner and Mineral Spirits. I buy these by the quart and use a couple of small bottles for actual use, don't try dipping your brushes in the cans, small jars make thing so much easier. Why the 2 types? The Mineral Spirits are used to thin the paint, the Lacquer Thinner is for cleaning the brushes. When you need clean dry brushes Lacquer Thinner is the only way to go, it evaporates quickly and a solvent free dry brush is going to be needed for most of your painting.
Acrylics: What's this?? I thought we were using oils?? Well we are but your going to need to base coat your sculpt and acrylics are the only way to go. I have had fantastic results with Vallejo brand acrylics. They are sold in hobby shops catering to military modelers. This is a premium paint and worth getting. I use Basic Flesh Tone and Beige Red for my basecoating. I use an airbrush for this step, brush painting aint gonna cut it, trust me. If you do not own an airbrush I highly recommend base coating with Tamiya brand Flesh in the spray can. Like I said, this works for me, an alternative may be out there but I don't know what it is.
First we need a good viable fleshtone base coat. I use Vallejo brand Basic Fleshtone with a drop of Beige Red mixed into my color cup. This is airbrushed on. You may choose to simply enhance an existing paint job which is fine as long as the tones are similar to the pictured figure to the right. Some of Dragons flesh tones for example are way too pink to be salvageable, Alfred comes immediately to mind as does Fritz and Ernst.
Now we're going to lay down the base coat of oil. Use the flesh tone from the recipe and brush it on, use as little as possible because we need to have just a thin film of the basic flesh oil laid down. I use a #2 brush and pick up a dab, brush it on and spread it around until I can't get the paint to spread further, then repeat. Once you have the entire flesh area covered you need to clean and dry your brush, and then start brushing off all the excess paint wiping often on a paper towel. You will need to keep cleaning and drying your brush until you have a good thin film laid down. Know you know why we bothered with the arcylic base coat eh? Notice in the picture you can not see those ugly brush strokes? It's not magic it's just a simple technique. Just remember that if you see brush strokes, you have to remove more of the paint. We are trying to "tint" the base of acrylic, not paint over it.
Now we are going to add the beginning of our shading. Shading is wherever shadows would fall on the sculpt. Use your yellow ochre and burnt sienna base mixture for this step. As you can see you don't have to be extremely neat but I caution you to apply a very thin layer, add a touch of spirits to the paint so the paint will leave the brush easier. If you go a little off course don't worry about it one bit, you will be able to push the paint back where it belongs by stabbing it back into place with a clean dry brush. By now with all this cleaning of the brush you will understand the importance of having small jars of thinner handy.
Now we are going to do the initial blending.I use a 10/1 brush for this. What you are going to do is lightly stab the shading color, the object being to get a nice smooth and even tint. You should notice that the shading has blended itself in with the flesh tone a bit and we will finish the job in the next step. For this step concentrate on getting the shading to be even. Again a clean dry ans solvent free brush is an absolute must. I think I cleaned my brush about 8 or 9 times to blend this to step.
Now for the final blending. Again using a clean dry and solvent free brush you are going to stab at the edge of the shading. The objective is to get a smooth transition between the colors. If your shading is too small, drag it out a little bit, if it goes to an unwanted area drag it back, this is what makes the oils so easy to work with. I think I spent a total of 15 minutes of oil painting to get to this point, and that includes taking pictures. Now you can go to bed, get up in the morning and head off to work, when you get home your paints will still be in working order and you can continue on with the next steps.
Recipes for Colors
Mix 40% yellow ochre with 60% burnt sienna. This will be used to make all of your flesh tones so make a small supply of this mixture.
Basic Flesh: Now grab a pea sized blob of titanium white and mix in a touch of the yellow ochre/burnt sienna mixture, adjust to match the acylic base reasonably close.
Initial Shading: Use your yellow ochre/burnt sienna mixture.
Deep Shading: Use straight burnt sienna.
Intial Highlighting: Add a touch of titanium white to your flesh tone mixture.
Final Highlighting: Add titanium white to your initial highlighting color.
To be continued........
**Click an image to view full size**
These are the brushes I use. The large brush is used to remove excess paint and smooth the base coat of basic flesh. I apply the majority of the paints using the 10/0 brush, the #0000 super fine brush is used on the eyelids, pupils and corner of the eye details as well as lining the mouth. Some of them are pretty ratty and as you can see well used.
