I NEED HELP WITH FACES AND HANDS!!!!!!! 1/35-1/15

Usually all i do when i'm painting faces and hands is on the face, i usually just paint the eyebrows and the eyes and sometimes the hair on the back of the head. I just paint the whole eye white, and they eyebrows and hair a brown or dark yellow. That way, you get a pretty good ammount of detail and its not that difficult to paint, so you don't mess up your model. You're gonna have to get somone else to help you on the hands, i never do anything special to em. Hope this helps

jlkaz,

The easiest way I've found to do figures without much mess is to block in the features using a flesh color, the wash the entire face with a thinned down flesh or brown wash. After dry, I'll use a very light drybrush over the raised area of the face, usually just the cheekbones, forehead, and bridge of the nose. Hands can be done in exactly the same fashion. After completion, use a 10-0 brush to pick out the eyes, teeth, or any other detail that you require. With a small amount of practice, the results are quite convincing for 1/35 scale.

Hope it helps out.

demono69

What book did you use? Painting faces isn't too hard, the techniques that francois verlinden talks about for oils are fairly foolproof, and with a little practice you will soon develop your own ways of doing things. The Verlinden way vol 4 or 5 has a chapter on painting faces, try getting a copy of these.

You could try getting the book How to Paint Realistic Military Figures, second edition
from Kalmbach, it is available from this site, I have read through this book and it seems to be a good beginers guide and talks about using acrylics as well.

Do you use oils, enamels or acrylics? It is possibe to paint figures with any of them, but the techniques are quite different for each type, I prefer oils.

I'm not sure that it is fair to ask the readers of this forun to provide you with a step by step guide, as it would take a whole book to cover the subject. You could also try searching Amazon.com for other books on the subject of figure painting.

Thankyou all for the replies. 1 I use Shepard Pain's How to build Doiramas 2nd edition. 2 I use Acrylics and enamels, which will very soon change to all Acrylics. 3 I am good at the eyes. 4 What I meant by step by step is that I just wanted some one to give me a short Idea.... 1 do this, 2 do this, 3 do this..... so on and so forth and to let me in on a few secrets tips and tricks. Any help like this would be extremely appreciated.

PS>I changed my Screen Name

Looks like that book of yours really ticked you off, Airbrush. I offer no guarantees, but you might want to try this:

Paint the whole head flesh using enamels. Let it dry overnight then paint a second coat. Maybe even a third. Allow to dry thoroughly. Mix even parts of burnt sienna and raw umber oils then paint it all over the head. Leave for about 3 mins then, using soft cloth, very gently rub off the oils. This should leave only enough oils within the creases of the face and a very thin coat covering the skin. Allow to dry. You can then paint on the eyes and hair.

Depending on the paint Im using I usually mix in yellow and a very small amount of red onto the flesh. That way the figure will look a little more lively.

Hope this helps.

Allan did u read my ps, I am jlkaz. =) and yes it has me mad at it

I have the same book, and using that technique does tend to lead to an ugly build up of paint. I use a similar system to allan above, I Airbrush a coat of desert yellow mixed with flesh, the exact ratio is not important, I tend to go for a pinker look for paler skin, and a yellower look for darker skin. I use a soft brush to remove the oil paint rather than a cloth, and once I have done this I leave the face for about half an hour, then using a mixture of matt white enamel and the original burnt sienna/naples yellow/yellow ochre (depending on your preferance) base coat, gently work in some highlights to the base coat, on the areas like the cheek bones, bridge of nose, top lip, forehead etc. I leave this another few minutes (now you've mixed the white enamel this layer will dry a little faster) then using another clean DRY brush(NO thinner at all, otherwise all the paint will come away), wipe off the highlight paint leaving ony a thin coating. Make sure you do not completely remove all the highlight paint or blend it completely into the surrounding base coat, other wise you may as well not have bothered. The trick is to gradually build up the layers of paint, applying it more as a stain than a coat of paint. You can now add some extreme highlights with almost pure white, just to the very tip of the nose, above the eyes, highest points on the cheek bones, blend thiis into the surounding areas carefully, but not so much that they dissapear.

Now for the shadows, using burnt sienna/raw uber mix, carefully work in a few shadows into the darkest areas. You can carefully add a little shading around the beard area to simulate 5 o'clock shadow.

carefully work a little pink to the cheeks, you can dry brush this afterwards or work it into the wet oils, whichever you prefer, and add a little dark read/brown colour to the lips, but don't over do it, you don't want them looking like they have lipstick on!

to paint the eyes work white enamel into the eyes, the oil paint already there will make it a bit pink, that is good, pure white is too bright. once this is dry use balck or dark blue and paint a dot in the centre, but make sure that the balck meats the top and bottom eyelid otherwise they will look pop eyed.

hope this helps

Phil