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As I have a few days off from work thought I would start a tutorial on face painting, This will be done in oils and I hope maybe of use to you.

I will split this tutorial over a few phases and try my best to show you how I do it. I would like to make this a Q&A blog also, and try and get as many members involved with their questions tips and such like, it would also be nice to see your work either those following this tutorial or faces you guys have already done.

Okay Phase one, the set up:
The ingredients for this are very simple, as the pic shows.



Okay the head for this will be a Dragon 1:16 Head.



So lets now prep our head, give it a wash, and a rub over with a polishing nail board, then a final wash with ISO, dont wipe it dry just let it dry by itself, this way we dont get any fibres or threads stuck to it.



We now will pre-prime the face with a very light pass of Tamiya Flat Flesh XF-15, Then when its dried we make a further 2 light passes to get the base colour down.I prefer a ratio mix of 60% thinner to 40% paint, that way we wont over spray it and loose any detail.

Now when thats dry, we need to give it another smooth surface for the oil paints, so I do a light spray of satin varnish,this not only creates a smooth surface but also seals the base colour. So any accidents can be lightly wiped off.



Now its time to try and add some life to our face, Im going to use Vallejo off white 820 to the add the white of the eyes, this does not have to be exact, as any over spill of the white will be painted around to even the look off, more on that later.
Our head should look like this now.



Now when thats dry with a fine brush point we need to add some pupils, Im useing Vallejo Burnt Umber 941, now if your head has no pupil marks in the eye socket, I tend to make the eyes look to the right, this then prevents trying to get the perfect straight forward look and stops the face looking bog eyed.

Once again dont worry if you go outside the eye socket, just try and get the pupils evenish.



Time to add the oil paint base colour now and define the eye sockets, we will need 3 blobs of oil paint, Burnt Sienna,Titanium White and yellow Ochre, there is no exact mix or quantities here, see the pic for an idea of what you will need.



Now lets blend these colours together, it will be a dark mix, but we need it to be so we can lighten and mix various shades for the face later on.We now take a blob or 2 of our base mix, and add a touch more white.Mix until your happy with the colour tone.



Lets now start on painting around the eye socket and getting those eyes to look acceptable, have with you at this stage some thinners, I use white spirit, now dip your brush in the thinners get rid of the excess, and mix your brush in the lighter base mix.

Now try and even the eyes up, by light strokes around the eye socket, and dab around the eye section to create, what looks like a mask. Dont put to much oil paint on here just a nice coat so you can see the difference between the mix and prime colour.



Now go do something else, then come back with fresh eyes and see if the eyes look even, and your happy with your work. Oil paints stay wet for yonks, so dont worry about them drying, I have left my mix overnight with no problems.

Now take a dab of the original dark flesh mix,and mix it into the mix you used for the eye mask, blend that together with a touch of thinners, and we are now ready to move on.

Okay take your brush and dab around the lighter mix with the darker mix, try and go upto the line of the lighter mix and not over it.The finer the brush is the easy this is, as you wont be able to push to much paint with a fine brush.

Again dab your brush in thinners and remove the excess and with a light stabbing motion, blend the two tones, this is where the two different tones meet together, just light dabs where one colour meets the next, clean your brush, dab again in thinners, and blend the colours so you cant see where one starts or finishes. And when complete it should look something like this.





So when your happy with it at this stage just place it some where dust free,then we can move on to adding depth, colour tone and shadow, with the ingredients shown above.

I hope this helps get you started and gives you time to practice before we do the next installment.Thanks for reading.
Ray