Painting Faces at Tabletop Level
In this short article, I will describe two ways to paint faces on a so-called tabletop standard. The text follows two versions of the painting. One will use a store-bought wash, and in the second, slightly less contrasting one, I will use a wash that I got from regular paint. This way, the reader can choose which method suits them better.
The first step is to dye the base color.
Left: Since I'm going to use a store-bought wash in this example, I decided to go for a darker shade of skin tone.
Right: In this example, I'm going to use the color as a base for the wash, so I decided to go for a slightly lighter skin tone - and therefore a lighter base color.
The next step is to apply the wash.
Left: I use a regular, store-bought Reikkland Fleshshade wash.
Right: On a drop of the darker skin tone, I add two drops of Lahmian Medium and a drop or two of water. This creates my own wash, which I apply similarly to the example on the left.
Then comes the first highlight.
Left: I apply the base color to the raised parts of the face and thus get the first highlight.
Right: Just like in the example on the left, I use the base color as the first highlight.
Then the second highlight.
Left: I get the second highlight by mixing the base color with a lighter shade.
Right: I follow the same process as on the left, with the caveat that I never use pure white to mix the highlight, it's always an off white – with a minimal amount of some pigment.
The penultimate step is to outline the eyes.
Left: This step is identical in both cases.
Right: I outline the eyes with some off-white paint (to make my life easier, it's usually two lines).
The last step is to add shadows around the mouth and eyes.
Left: In this case, you can use a darker wash like Nuln Oil or Druchi Purple.
Right: I mixed black and purple and added two drops of Lahmian Medium and a drop or two of water to create a darker wash, then applied the mixture to the eye sockets, making sure not to get the wash on the previously drawn eyes.
And the last thing is drawing the pupils – just vertical lines of dark/black color against the horizontal light lines for the eyes.
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