Face

 

Mr Wonky Eye.

While poking around various models and preparing the next main working topic, I came across a spare head. It's a resin cast from an Astartes model where I'm using the helmet instead. Straight off the bat: yes, the face is a little off. It might be the sculpt, but I could possibly fix it up by nudging the model's left eye down slightly. There's also a weird sneer thing going on, which is definitely the sculpt, and not much I can do about that. None of that really matters too much however, because this was just a practice piece in painting faces.

As a bit of practice the goal was exploration of colours rather than a finished display piece. I wasn't as super-neat as I could have been, blending could've been pushed further in places (particularly the forehead), and so on. I was far more interested in facial colour planes: more yellow on the upper third, more red in the middle, and blue (kind of) on the lower third.

...and I'm John Chin.

I had the idea to literally pick a base colour and mix slight amounts of yellow, red, and blue into it to create variation. I originally tried to use a base of Cadian Fleshtone, however that particular paint needs some recovery and I had to abandon it. Instead I switched to using the more-yellow tone as the base.

• Bestigor Flesh
• Rhinox Hide / Mephiston Red (1:1), which I already have pre-mixed.
• Incubi Darkness, which is a little more green than blue but it was close by and I figured it'd probably still work.
• Ulthuan Grey, for the eyes.

Other than the primer of course, the above are the only paints I used. There's nothing particularly fancy, just mix them and paint. Other than the Ulthuan Grey, all the other paints are mixed to varying degrees - mostly just to tint the base colour. The cheeks are more red, and I also pushed that further to outline the eyes. The model's left eye could have used a much thinner lower eyelid highlight, and although the sculpt has definite trouble here this is one aspect I'll try remember for future reference. Give the lower eyelid a highlight, but make it very thin!

Pushing more of the Incubi Darkness mix into the hollows of the cheeks defines them clearly and gives a leaner, more masculine impression. It's important to very subtly highlight towards the jawline or it looks like there isn't much jaw and the hollow just turns into a cliff. The photo below shows the other side where I didn't do this properly, and it's good for comparison to see what does and doesn't work. I also glazed the Incubi Darkness mix around the nose, and that worked really well - it defines the facial shape in a soft and natural way compared to what I've previously done.

Look upon my chin and despair!

The chin sticks out a bit far, and I didn't help that by increasing the contrast under the lips. The highlight of the chin is also too far down. There's a reason for that: a small imperfection in the resin left a bubble hole and I was trying to fill it in with paint and a dot of blu-tac. It's worth it to notice what doesn't work on the chin, hopefully allowing me to get it right in future. I probably should've done a cleft in the chin too.

All in all, I'd say this is a success. Sure it's a little rough, but it's still some of the best colours I've ever done for a face. A greater degree of realism, and almost like an oil painting. If I can fix up the Cadian Fleshtone I think that would give me some more to work with on the forehead (it needs a touch more red towards the eyebrows). I also might paint the hair, but not sure which colour to go with there just yet.

-- silly painter.