Thanks, Patrick! I'm glad you can see what I've tried to achieve. I'm really struggling with this one but thanks to all the nice comments am sticking with it
Thank you,
mobear. I used Vallejo acrylics.
I first gave the face a base coat of fresh tone, then painted in the whites if the eyes.
Then I used burnt umber and painted in the dark areas such as below the eyes, below the bottom lip, above the eyes where there's a lot of shadow, etc. (this gives me a guideline of areas where I'll darken my flesh mix when I add another coat).
After this I used flesh, white, burnt umber, black and red in various mixes. Using flesh as my base colour I mixed up several variations using the other colours. I work with the paint wet to blend the colours, like you would with oils. It dries fast, especially under a spot lamp, so I had to work fast. I also had to re-do it many, many times before I was vaguely happy with it.
The eyes were very hard. Even with my smallest brush and magnified glasses, I struggled. However, I found the tip to not having a 'startled-rabbit-in-the headlights-look', was to simply paint a bottom eye lid so the eyes aren't bulbous-looking.
I studied a lot of figure artists for tips. I still don't know how some of them paint their 1/35 figures so well. I've seen them with very realistically painted eyes, complete with reflections in the pupils!!!