Questions About Painting Premium Format Headsculpts

[777althael]

I want to give my Catwoman premium format headsculpts a bit of an overhaul. I have some eye decals and stuff for the unmasked one, but in terms of her being super pale, I feel some cheek blush and lipstick could go a long way.

For the lipstick, what kind of paint do you guys find works best? Should i use a brush or another method of painting?

For the Blush and stuff, i was told that i could use real makeup in order to get the desired effects i wanted, is this true or is there another/better method to achieve a less pale catwoman (and bring out those cheek bones!)

I have a couple old garbage headsculpts (Wonderwoman Body, another catwoman headsculpt) for practice, but i figured id ask here since I have never really painted anything like a statue before.

Thanks for any and all help/suggestions!

 

[parvo]

If you got some complex task ahead of you, the best way of getting to it is breaking it down in less complex steps with a clear objective in mind.
Ideally you understand fully what you want to achieve and how, prior to holding a brush in your hand.

Plan your paint job in layers and do it step by step, without rush.
Makeup is perfectly fine, provided that you could somehow seal it. For real life application it isn't precisely designed for long term use btw. If it doesn't hold or fade, I wouldn't count on it heavily for colors (specially yellows or reds). Makeup would be better suited to use in non critical color applications.

Another alternative is using pastels for shading. You grind them, apply them carefully and then seal them. (ref: tutorial)
Artist quality pastels are preferable, as they got more pigment in them and tend to fade less overtime (it's referred as lightfastness in paint or in pastels.

Pale doesn't mean pure white. Even if she's apparently a ghost, there are various skin tones underneath.
Paint comes in opaque and translucent and in between. For acrylics it usually appears in the tube or bottle's label, at least in the good quality ones.

In reality, the light permeates the skin and you perceive some skin tones as diffuse ones. The way of emulating this in a resin cast is using transparent tones over opaque ones to give that illusion.

For skin tones, you do a base coat. For the catwoman it may be a pinkish fleshtone. Then you speckle it (dry brush) with different transparent tones or opaques, to give it depth, shade it where is needed and finally apply a diluted transparent white (white with little ochre maybe) to blend everything. Each layer needs to be dry to not smear the previous job, and there's the option of using a pastel sealer in between color application, as to "save your layer" and do corrections easily. A matte varnish is the final step, and for 1:6 heads the testors matte dullcoat is known for it's good results.


Pipeline for skin panting:
- (1) Base tone (opaque colors)
- (2) Base tone shading (pastels, airbrush etc).
- (3) Color characterization (transparent and opaques): veins, blotches, freckles
- (4) Diffuse layer (transparent): it kind of blends everything.
- (5) Final characterization (makeup;blush, mascara; hard outlines if present, tattoos, etc)

 

[777althael]

Wow Parvo that was extremely insightful, Thank you very much for taking the time to type that up for me!

 

[PIZSCUSTOM]

use vallejo acrylic paint
all done