Last Friday, I added the gray primer to Conan and Belit.
I sprayed this from directly over Conan's head to give me a visual guide where the strongest light would fall as if beneath a noonday sun.
Some of you were wondering about the effect: Here it is!
For me, the gray helps me block in the base flesh and first shadowed flesh colors. I suppose it also acts a little like pre-shading. Now, I have to get painting.
OK, time for an admission: I've never airbrushed a figure before. All of my figure painting experience is with a brush. I'm breaking new ground here! I mixed my own base flesh tone using Vallejo red, white, deep yellow, and deep green -- ratio 5:9:6:2. While Conan hails from Cimmeria, essentially Northern Europe, I thought he'd be darker complected right now because of all the time he's spent sailing around in the tropics without a shirt on. Thus, I went with a darker base flesh.
I'm blocking in the base flesh tone on those places that were almost purely gray and fading the edges into the places that remained black. My plan is to complete Conan's skin, mask him off, paint Belit's skin, then work the clothing.
I made the basic shadow color by adding a bit of green to the base flesh mix. You can see it in the cup.
Here's Conan with the basic shadow flesh color blocked in. It looks a little stark right now, but I'll work in a deepest shadow color and then highlights, and it'll look even worse. Then I'll start blending everything together. I'll resort to brush work on the face, and probably for some of the more subtle blending on the rest of his body.
The base shadow color will serve as the base flesh color in the shadowed areas. Then I'll add subtle highlights and shadows there--nothing too stark. Because of the nature of the figures pose and the amount of shadow cast by Belit, I'm forcing the light thing a bit, both for realism (hopefully) and dramatic effect.
Again, I'm revamping what I would normally do while using a brush and transferring that over to the airbrush. We'll see how he turns out!