Alright, back at it again with Wendy. After completing the Melissa George tutorial, I decided to stick with it and go with a golden skintone. I am naturally inclined to paint that tone, so it just makes it easy. I mixed up a curious looking color that I had my doubts about. It incorporated Phthalo green, which is a color I am learning to work with more and more. Also, MG uses a lot of opaque skin tones which is something that I have gotten away from. She is a prototype artist and I am not, so I followed her lead. I am calling the color "honey wheat."
As an aside, I will also let you in on this little secret. In addition to a photo log, I keep a sketch book full of paint swatches for each baby. I write down recipes for new colors and hues that I find and ideas that I have. See where I did not like the first version of the color I made? Working colors based on a video is freakin hard. I tend to dab and tinker, so there is no way I can keep track of even which relative amounts of these paints comprise the final color. You may even be able to get this same color with way fewer contributors. If you can, I recommend it. The fewer ingredients, the less muddy your final color is and that it pretty important.
So, then I slapped that color on the baby and let it flash. Following the application of the skin, I then did veins and blue pop. Since I decided on a warm skin tone, I had to do warmer veins. I chose Phthalo blue 02 and a premixed Vein blue. At this point, I baked the baby because I did not want my veins smudging. Baby is looking a little dead, which is better than looking like vinyl.
I decided at this point that I wanted to liven the baby up, so I went off tutorial and added a burnt umber wash. It helped a bit. The next step in the tutorial was creases. MG uses air dry paints, so I had to guess at which Genesis paints would work best. I went with a premixed creases color + a bit of Q. crimson 01. I let that flash and also did blushing. MG uses a blush color that I loved. The closest that I could get to the color shown in the video is to mix equal parts Q.crimson 01 + Q.magenta 02. It is a very vibrant color. At this point, I discovered pinholes in the toes. Drats, fine then. I decided that I would just have a rainbow baby and enjoy what I was painting. I baked.
The next step is a tangerine wash. MG makes hers opaque by adding a buff color, but I decided to stay transparent. I simply used Genesis orange for this wash. I knew at this point that I was going to have to do at least one purple wash to tone down this yellow. I also wanted to do a color pop of the tangerine in the T-zone and on the tops cheeks. Since I was going with a rainbow baby, I might as well make sure I have all of ROY G. BIV accounted for. Shown in warm white (left) and Ottlite (right).
The next step is also a simple one: Flesh 08 speck mottle. I really did have my doubts about this one, but everything was working out pretty well so far, so I stuck to it. I made it relatively concentrated so that I would impart some of that opacity that MG is a fan of.
Holy depth, Batman! I hit the jackpot with this layer. She just went from project baby to sell-able. Her skin now has that translucent quality that I has been eluding me. I never would have thought that adding a semi-opaque layer would be what I needed to give the skin depth. It even helped cover the pinholes on the toes! I still think she is a little yellow at this point, but that is nothing a little raisin wash won't fix. Before I baked her, I let the Flesh 08 layer flash and added some little red capillaries.
My final step was to give her a "raisin" wash. This is a color that I make by mixing burnt umber with bountiful baby's eyelid purple. It took the yellow out of the skin and gave her a dusky cast that matched my own skintone. I tried several colors of eyes at this point, too. I like the warmth of brown eyes and the depth of large-pupil-newborn, but since her face has a riot of color already, I went with chuck hazel. Once I had eyes, I painted on brows using my favorite brow color - raw umber.
I think we are done here. That'll do, pig. That'll do.