I first noticed Caleb several months ago. I am not into the whole hospital role-play thing, so preemies with canulas, oxygen tubing, etc. never appealed to me. Then my 9 year old step-daughter asked to paint her own reborn with me for her birthday. How sweet! The catch was that she wanted a preemie. I remembered Caleb, and the next sale saw him happily in my cart for $13!!
Then he arrived. He was teensy. A micro preemie. He was long and skinny with long fingers and toes and the tiniest, cutest head. He was not what Bear was looking for, but he would be a perfect challenge for me. Not only was he an older kit (which I have reborned a streak of lately), but he would require me to learn to create a new skintone.
Next, I did what I do best, RESEARCH! I looked up pictures of preemies, read about preemie skin care, read about handling preemies, and asked my artist friends for input. The first thing that I (and probably everyone else who has ever seen a preemie) noticed was how red they were. The second thing I noticed is that most of them are pretty shiny. Finally, they have a lot of hair. I never thought about it, but most of the preemies shown on Google image search had heads full of hair.
This was going to take some forethought and planning. Before I even washed the kit, I knew that I needed a cool base that would have some very warm washes over it. I chose Flesh 06 as my base layer. I wanted to build a ruddy skin tone. Flesh 08 would make a pinky skin tone, Flesh 07 would be a nice warm newborn. Flesh 06, when combined with the palette I had in mind, would hopefully give me a dark enough base. I baked after two layers of this and then did a vein blue mottle and a dirty purple mottle. I also shaded in these two colors before baking. Once cooled, I used the muted pink blush from the Melissa George tutorial to liven up all of the areas where I would later be blushing for realsies.
As I mentioned when I was working on Wendy, I really like the occasional opaque layer. The blush did a great job of covering up some excess mottling on the fingers, palms, toes, and soles. Cool. Next, I did an indigo mottle and I went over the shaded areas with the same color. I baked, then it was time to add a skin tone. After studying preemies, I decided that the base would be red-orange. There are definitely some golden spots in the preemie complexion, but I will save those for a speck mottle later on in the process.
I put a whole bunch of colors together and ended up with a lovely semi-opaque "coral." Again, you could probably get this easier than I did, but here is what all I combined: Genesis orange, Pyrrole red, Flesh 06, Phthalo green 06, Earth Mint, Diarylide yellow, Raw sienna, Flesh 08, and Genesis red. It was so nice, I applied it twice! I let the skin flash, then added some prominent veins using Phthalo blue 02 and Ultramarine blue. Finally, I threw on some Phthalo blue 02 and Phthalo green 06 color pops.
Next, it was time for creases. Since preemies are so red and their skin is so thin, I went with a pure Pyrrole red 02 creasing color. I can always darken it later. I wanted these creases to really make the hands and feet glow. Because the baby is going to be washed in warm colors, I decided to use Q. crimson as the blush color. The coolness of it should help in not get lost in the washes to come. I really love Q. crimson. It is one of the most useful colors I work with. Finally, I added a lavender wash going up the hands and feet. This would give the impression of immature blood flow.
Wash time! I started with a tangerine wash for overall warmth, followed by a Pyrrole red 02 wash. This is one hot little tamale. Then I added a Flesh 08 speck mottle that was tinted with Diarylide yellow. This was a disaster. I ended up stripping those layers off. Even though he was baked, stipping that layer still took off some of the blushing layer that should have been set. I had to back up and correct the blushing. I ended up adding Q.magenta to the feet and hands and a Genesis red speck mottle to the rest of the baby. At this point he looked pretty good to me skin-wise. I started detailing and color popping him. I was super pleased with the paint job. He is not my cup of tea, but I do think that I got pretty close to a true preemie skintone. I finished him up with some Raw umber eyebrows and began thinking about hair.
Here he is all assembled! He is such a wee little mite. He's swimming in this preemie onesie. Hold on buddy, you have clothes on the way.
