Hasslefree's Almira - more skin practice

[Solun Decius]

Here's my next shot at display quality skin.

It's Hasslefree's Almira and I bought this model simply because it's all skin. It would be straight forward enough to choose one skin tone and only practice the smooth shading, but I wanted to add a little twist to it, technique-wise, so I decided to add tan lines. This will press me to try to keep the shading/highlighting temperature changes even between different colors over a smooth surface. I would like to do it really smooth, but my main focus is on getting the gradients even between the different colors.

Here's where I'm at now. Nothing but base colors on the skin.

Looking at the photos I feel I have to decide whether I try to get the base coats smoother or if I try to smooth it out in the shading/highlighting process. Also, the tanned skin color is a bit dark, even for a sun lover, so I might try to get the highlights over a wider area but concentrate the shades to the recesses and closely surrounding areas.

If anyone has pointers already at this stage that would be well appreciated, but then we'll just see how this experiment unfolds.

 

[PegaZus]

Fun little concept. But in the right top picture, is that supposed to be a tan line going over her right shoulder (left side)? I guess looking closer, that might be a bit of a halter top rather than a strapless or a bikini.

If you plan on basing it, you might have the top appearing unhooked and laying on the ground. Could make that a bit more understandable from my point of view.

No idea what to do with the bikini bottom however. Maybe have it laying on a sponge and a starfish.

 

[TrystanGST]

Interesting idea. I would definitely work on getting the base coat as smooth as possible now. It will pay off later.

 

[Solun Decius]

@PegaZus: Thanks man, those are cool pointers and I worked on those lines a bit already. It was meant to be a tan line from a halter top style bikini but a tan line there would never be so strong, so I faded it quite a bit.
My original idea was to model bikini bottoms on it, maybe pulled down a little so I could still do part of the tan line there and then base it with the top untied but still lying in place. I might still buy another one and do that or strip this one if it doesn't end up great, but for now I just wanted the skin practice and not to waste time with fiddly green stuff work.

@TrystanGST: Yup, that's sound advice. That's exactly what I've done now.

Basecoats are now smoother. Still just basecoats.

I faded and darkened the tan lines from the top a bit as those areas would see some sun from wearing different clothes and straps moving around and stuff.
Also smoothed the transitions between the areas a bit.

Here's a huge question for when I start highlighting:
I'm not going to do wet blending between different levels of shade or highlight. However I feel it might be the only way to get a smooth transition from tanned to fair skin within each level of highlight.
I'm not good at wet blending so if anyone has advice on how I could just use transparency layering (what is the official name for this method?) to highlight not only the two colors, but the transition between them as well, that would be great.
For instance I wonder if it would be better to work each level of highlight from the tanned up to the fair skin, or the other way around.

I think this isn't as big a deal in the shading, so I'll just start with the shading, working towards the darker skin and towards the darkest shades. Any ideas on the highlighting question would be greatly appreciated in the meantime.

 

[TrystanGST]

I've never done wet blending myself, as it pretty much requires using a retarding agent to keep the paint wet long enough.

I have, however, started using layering a lot by just thinning paints. In fact it's how I've been doing the majority of my shading lately. Take your highlight color, thin it 50/50 or better, and add layers until you get the shade you want.

 

[Solun Decius]

Yeah, that's the way I blend now, sometimes watering until the paint hardly leaves a mark. I've already done some blending on this model where the different skin colors meet.
I'm also too impatient for wet blending with drying retarders. Layered blending may take just as much or more time, but at least I can paint the whole time and not just wait for paint to dry slower than usual

My problem here is that I have gradients in two dimensions.
There's the gradient from base color to highlight, which will take at least 3 stages of highlighting for me to get smooth.
Then there's the gradient from tan skin to fair skin which currently is 2 intermediate mixes (plus original two colors) and isn't even that smooth yet.

So I'm wondering about the order in which to apply layers.
My current idea is doing a whole stage of highlighting over the entire surface, blending that over the transition from tanned highlight stage I color to fair highlight stage I color, but also making sure that I'm dragging the brush correctly to get a smooth transition from base color to highlight stage I color on every part.
Next doing highlight stage II, with a gradient from tanned highlight stage II color to fair highlight stage II color over the entire surface.

This sounds complicated, but I think that's because it is.
If someone can make this less complicated for me that would be amazing

 

[D a n]

There's the gradient from base color to highlight, which will take at least 3 stages of highlighting for me to get smooth.
Then there's the gradient from tan skin to fair skin which currently is 2 intermediate mixes (plus original two colors) and isn't even that smooth yet.

So I'm wondering about the order in which to apply layers.

Hey bud, it's Lord Dan from the Warseer forums. This model really intrigued me when you posted in over on the Warseer forums, and so I wanted to drop by and help figure out how to go about painting it.

Most tanlines don't have much of a transition at all, however as the purpose of this model is an exercise highlighting in two dimensions I think a mild transition between the two sections is fine. I was going to recommend highlighting the fair and tanned skin normally before you blend them together, before my mind was blown when I realized that the blended section joining the fair and tanned skin would itself need to be highlighted.:doh:

So I've given this a bit of thought, and I think the best thing to do is probably to paint the whole model with tanned skin, highlight it normally, and then go in to paint the fair skin by blending up from your base tan color again. To demonstrate, take a look at the picture I've attached.

Short of doing that, the only other way I can think of would be to highlight the fair and tanned sections normally, and then blend those together with a glaze.