Mother of Pearl Effect?

[Isis]

I\'m thinking about trying a Mother of Pearl effect on one of my figures.... Has anybody done this before and is keen to offer any pointers on how to do it?
I thought about having a go at wetblending pink, light blue, light yellow and light green, fading into off-white around the edges and setting highlights like on gems.
Any advice?

Kia Ora, Isis

 

[Fizl]

Will you be using pearlescent medium with those colours?

Shaz

 

[torifile]

I have a few pearlescent colors that I have wet blended together for a good pearl effect. To get the cream-colored pearl, try mixing a light silver with bone. Silver can be mixed with other colors to get pearly shades.

 

[Ebonbuddha]

Would you highlight up to pure white? Maybe an ivory?

Originally posted by torifile
I have a few pearlescent colors that I have wet blended together for a good pearl effect. To get the cream-colored pearl, try mixing a light silver with bone. Silver can be mixed with other colors to get pearly shades.

 

[Isis]

I\'ve heard that pearlescent medium does the trick quite well, but I\'m more interested in achieving the effect without it...
I don\'t think I will go up to pure white, just to a mix of probably 75%white and 25% bone.
I\'m not too sure how I will do the light reflections on it though.

 

[dauber22]

Pearescent medium doees an okay job, but for a real Mother of Pearl effect, I think you\'d be better off not relying on it to heavily. Maybe mix some in with your colors as a boost though. I think pale, pastel shades blended to off white is the way to go IMO. As for the light reflections, you could always go with gloss sealer on the pearlized areas.

 

[Nailpainter2003]

Originally posted by Isis
I\'m thinking about trying a Mother of Pearl effect on one of my figures.... Has anybody done this before and is keen to offer any pointers on how to do it?
I thought about having a go at wetblending pink, light blue, light yellow and light green, fading into off-white around the edges and setting highlights like on gems.
Any advice?

Kia Ora, Isis

I found that no matter what I\'m attempting to paint, it\'s best to have an example in front of you. If you don\'t have a mother-of-pearl gemstone.....improvise with say, m-o-p nailpolish? Not to substitute as paint, mind you, but mix the nailpolish well and pour a blob onto white/lt.grey stock card. Actually see the many colors and how they swirl together. Then mix your acrylics(seperately) to match all the colors you see, keeping your paints thinned. You could end up with as many as ten or more colors and varying hues of: Blues/Greys/pinks/greens/ivorys,etc. Add a tiny drop of \'blending gel\' to make wet-blending easier with a longer time frame to work with before paint dries. This will give you time to layer colors and alternate with a swirling pattern. I will try this myself to see how it works and pass along the results, please let us see your work. Also, after completing and sealing with matte finish, you can use an iridescent glaze to highlight this particular area. It\'s sold in craft stores along with the gloss coat with the paints.
Just an idea...hope it helps,
Faye
P.S. It sounds much like the method I used to achieve my warm,coppery look to the plates on Freya\'s leather bodice??
Freya Close Up

 

[Isis]

Thank you all for your input, I\'ve got a pretty good idea of how to approach this now... It will be a little while until the figure in question is done (and then there\'s always the problem of getting a decent pic...)
but I will let you know how it worked out.

Faye - I had a look at the pic, it\'s pretty close to what I would like to achieve (although of course the colours are different). Put the pic through once you\'ve tried it, I\'d be interested to see how it turns out!

Kia Ora, Isis

 

[Isis]

Okay, now I\'ve tried it, but it doesn\'t seem to work as well as I thought. The wetblending was definitely the way to go, but it ended up looking pretty much flat as I have no idea on how to highlight this properly, because the colours are so light already.
I am going to try this again on a larger area as that would make the highlighting and blending a lot easier.
Has anyone else tried it?

Kia ora, Isis