[JohnReid]

What about the dreaded face!

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I can here you saying well that is fine for the body but what about the face?well the face is nothing more than a bunch of hills, valleys and crevasses like the body but mostly on a smaller scale.What about those eyes that no one can seems to get right? the hair how do I get it to look soft,almost touchable?
Well provided that the scupturer did his job right there should be lots of hills and valleys to work with.This is where the quality of the casting comes in. I am happy to say most figure castings offered for sale today are pretty good.Don"t try going cheap here buy the best casting you can afford.If possible shine a light down from the top .Do the features pop out at you? do they look natural?Is everything in the right place(remember we are all experts at the human face)Does the face fit in with your storyline?Will he be carrying on a conversation or gesturing to another figure?
I find that most painters overdo the face to the point that it looks painted.We want to avoid this at all costs.Subtle is the word here.What about the eyes?nothing looks worse than a bug -eyed face.Well relax,most scales don't even require that we paint them and at the larger scales we can fake it to make them look like they really are there.Now for a few examples......

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

My setup!

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This is my setup for applying pastels.The two circular plastic plates is where I shave off the pastels sticks ,using an xacto knife held a a 90% angle. The pastel powder obtained is usually fine enough to use directly on the figure.
The bright colors in round tubes I sometimes use to modify the square stick colors.Mostly I use the browns,grays,black and white,burnt sienna that you see in the plates.
The brushes are mostly small soft brushes of various shapes.I really like the cats tongue brushes in various sizes.The smaller your scale the smaller the brush required.I even have a makeup brush or two borrowed from my wife.The important thing here is the the brushes be very soft and hold enough pastel to work with.Don't load up your brush but just transfer enough color to your figure that your first attempt may hardly even be noticeable, much like when you are drybrushing.Continue until you see subtle changes between the hills and valleys with no hard edges.Experiment,have fun and remember you can't make a mistake that can't be corrected when using this method.

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

Here is a painted face that is easily obtainable with my methods, of using chalk pastels over flat acrylics.I would consider this face as finished.

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

Here is the same face that I would consider overpainted to the point that it looks painted.

[JohnReid]

[JohnReid]

This is about the harshest light that any of my figures would ever be exposed to.The shine that you see is from me handling them.
If you look closely at the figure facing you,you could almost swear that you can see eyes looking at you.This is an interesting phenomenon where your brain automatically fills in the detail for you.The side view of the figure on the left foreground still needs some work as you can see.