Before, during and after Christmas, as well as after the New Year, I have barely picked up a brush. My routine such as I had one went out of the window and I simply got lazier and lazier. I managed to maintain a slight grip on my “Fools Gold” diorama and to some extent the blog but that is as far as it went. When I finally picked up a brush I realised I had ran out of time to get a figure done for this Saturday’s post. Accordingly, and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I was confronted with a blog dilemma, do I not post at all or do I try and make a post out of what I have done to date?
I decided against no post at all. I could hear the cries of “thank goodness TIM hasn’t posted, we will get a few days respite!” and concluded that annoying you all was more important to me than I realised!
So, what I have I got for you? Well let me start by saying this is not a tutorial, it is however a brief guide on how I paint faces. As you will know I am sure, there a great many ways to paint faces and painters far better than I am have tutorials on YouTube that you can follow and replicate. If this post is of any use then all well an good but other wise it is just a work in progress. Next week I will hopefully have the figure completed.
As I have mentioned before I prime using White Matt Enamel paint, Humbrol or Revel, diluted a little using white spirit. The face paints I use are from “Lifecolor” and the set of six I bought comprise of Flesh Base 1 & 2, Flesh Shadow 1 & 2 and Flesh Light 1 & 2. The first image below shows Flesh Base 2 having been applied. Please allow for the fact these images appear at 6 times or more bigger than the head of the real figure.

Next using Black, Vallejo in this case, I block out the eyes and apply a thin line to the mouth. I don’t concern myself if I have gone outside of the lines as that will be tidied up in due course.

Next I paint the whites of the eyes. Any white will do, I don’t get excited about an exact colour, perhaps I should but I don’t. This white was again a Vallejo colour.

Pupils come next and again I use black. I try to take account of where the figure is looking and position the pupil accordingly.

Time now to tidy up the black around the eyes using the base colour again and then, using the darker of the two shadow colours, outline the areas which need to be darker – around the eyes, hair line, neck, chin and nose.

The next image is a little blurred but at this point I am using the lighter base colour to start the highlights – forehead, chin and cheeks.

The next level of highlight is added to the same areas above.

Finally some near white to the nose, corner of the eyes and chin plus a little Old Rose Vallejo paint to the bottom lip.

Now the images on my Samsung Tablet show the head way larger than in reality (as mentioned above already), accordingly the end result looks far from great but in normal eyesight mode the exaggerated lines provide good definition. Hopefully the finished model will demonstrate that next week but if not then I will go back and touch a couple of bits up. That forehead is looking a bit to white as things currently stand.
Meanwhile I need to get my act together as this is not a great start to the New Year. I have lots to paint and do and shrugging off the festivities and establishing some sort of routine is a must. There are challenges on the horizon and my arse is not in gear for anything right now.
TIM