Hello Everybody...

My next project is a 200mm Sioux Indian bust from Young Miniatures. I love this bust. For me, I think it has one of the most expressively sculpted faces I've ever seen. It's been sitting in my grey army for some time, because, frankly, I was worried I wouldn't do such a wonderfully sculpted face the justice it deserves. But... I just couldn't wait any longer!

So, first off, the quality of the kit is just fantastic, and required almost no preparation. Here is the kit cleaned and prepped ready for assembly:



As you can see, it's a very, very clean cast. All the details are very crisply and cleanly sculpted.


Next was the priming of the main assembly. Here is the primed bust (primed using black and then white in a "zenithal" fashion):

All colors used are Golden Heavy Body Artists Acrylics.
First we'll paint the eyes. I first fill in the entire eye socket with Burnt Umber. Next is the eyeball - this is a very, very light, pale, blue-grey, that is a mix of Titanium White, Cerulean Blue, and Neutral Grey No. 7. The iris is painted with Burnt Umber and highlighted with a mix of Yellow Ochre and Burnt Umber painted in the lower halves of the eyes. The pupil is next and is just a simple large dot of Carbon Black. After the pupil go the light reflexes - a dot of Titanium White in each eye. Finally, I take a mix of Naphthol Red Light, Titanium White and a little bit of Neutral Grey No. 5 (to desaturate it a little), and paint this into the corners of the eye, and the bottom inside of the eyelids. Easier said then done! Here are the eyes, finished:

Now that the fussiest bit is out of the way, I'm going to take Titanium White and "sketch" in where I want all my highlights to go. The tops of the cheeks, eye ridges, nose, bottom of the chin, and the top sides of the mouth. It turns out these are exactly the areas that have received the most white primer - essentially I'm just going to emphasize this more by painting over them with Titanium White:

It's hard to see the difference between this photo and the one above, but trust me... there is now a nice opaque layer of white paint where I want all the highlights.
Now that the highlights are sketched in, I'm going to do the same thing for the shadows. The tones used for the shadows are a mix of Burnt Umber, Violet Oxide, and Payne's Grey. The shadows:

As you can see, aside from putting in the main shadows such as in the cheek area, under the bottom lip, and underneath the jaw/chin area, I also sketched in wrinkles and a lot of other small facial details that will (hopefully), add to the character of the face.
With that done, it's time to now add some color. If you've never seen under-painting like this before, this may look a little weird, but trust me - it'll all turn out well in the end We're going to do this step with several glazes, and take advantage of the transparency of artists acrylics.
The first glaze is going to be a made with Diarylide Yellow. It's a deep yellow color that almost borders on orange. This is going to be applied primarily to the forehead area. Next will be a glaze of Naphthol Red Medium. This is going to be applied to the top parts of the cheeks, under the nose and parts of the eyes. We'll also give the bottom of the eyes a glaze of Violet Oxide. The bottom half of the face and chin will receive a glaze of Payne's Grey. After all those glazes have been applied, we'll get something that looks like this:

Step by step, our Indian is coming alive . Next we are finally going to put our "skin" on top of all this. Again, taking advantage of the transparent properties of acrylics, we're going to lightly glaze what would be the actual skin tone on top of all this clown-like looking mess. The skin tone will be a glaze of Raw Sienna mixed with Burnt Sienna. You need to be careful with the Burnt Sienna though, it has a very reddish tone, and if you use too much, you'll wind up with a very stereotypical "drunk indian" skin tone, and that is something we really want to avoid. The trick here, is that certain parts of the face get glazed a little more than others. I think I glazed over the entire face three times, and the bottom half of the face another couple of times. Your glazes should be thin enough where they bring out all the colors in the layer below and tie everything together. The final step I took was to make an additional glaze for the highlight colors - this was a mix of a very small amount of Vat Orange and a lot of Titan Buff. I then glazed this over the highlighted areas to give them a little more color.
After all that glazing, here is the finished result:



Below is a much larger pic of the one above - it shows just how smoothly the glazes tie everything together and create really nice, rich skin tone variations and colors:

Despite the several layers of glazing on top of the "color layer", everything shines right though, and gives a very rich, deep look to our final result.
Here is the palette - it may help to see this, so you can see just how thin and transparent all these glazes are that were used to paint the color and final skin layers:

I don't always approach painting busts this way, but there have been a couple of recent WIP posts showing oils over acrylics, acrylics with the traditional base coat, shadow, and highlight approach and so on, so I thought I'd present yet another way to go about doing things.

I'd also like to kindly thank Matt DiPietro (an incredibly talented painter), who kindly showed me this approach when visiting him in Seattle.

Hopefully somebody may find this useful
Regards,
Phil

Hi Phil...fabulous SBS on the face,....great technique....looking forward to the progress..... Mike

Thank you Phil, great SBS and a great looking bust. I am following with interest.

Hi Phil,
interesting techmique andgreat results.
Have taken a seat at the front row and following closely with a view of trying this tachnique myself.

One question - how do you chose which coloue to use for the basic layers (after highlight and shadow steps)

Slainte
L.H.

you have really fetched the face alive phil. a great sbs and very useful and informative.

tony

Great technique so well described, many thanks.

Fabulous work again.

Looking great so far Phil.

Outstanding presentation of this technique, one that I have not seen done before but might try in the future.

Looks good Phil. I've found Indian subjects to be very interesting and creative subjects to paint with all the various colorful decorations and such on their clothing. Keep up the good work and interesting SBS.

Wayne

I like the bust and the explanation of the technique.
Santi.

Great article.
So far I have only heard of this technique being used on busts.
Do you think it is applicable to smaller scales 54/75 and to areas other than the face?

Phil mate your SBSs are always exciting but this is by far the best I've gone through!!!This technique is completely unknown to me but you've proved what excellent results it can produce.An educational and recreational SBS!!!!Looking forward for more!
PS:Needless to say,this bust already looks beautiful,when finished it is bound to be fantastic.

Oda.

A really good SBS, do you think the under-painting technique would work using thinned oils as the top coat?

Steve

Thanks! Really useful

Flesh tones are lookin good Phil!

Thanks Mike!

Thank you for the kind words Bob

Thanks, I'm glad you found the SBS useful.

And to answer your question...
The color in question come from something called "color zones" and it's based on fine art portraiture painting. In essence you break the face into three zones of color

• Yellow for the forehead area,
• Red for the eyes, cheeks, and nose
• Blue, Green or Grey for the bottom of the face - chin, jaw, everything beneath the nose

These colors are based on ambient light effects on how skin naturally reflects light.
The following article is a pretty good introduction:
https://alvalyn.com/using-color-zones-portraits/
However, depending on what kind of lighting conditions, time of day, climate, locale, etc... you can get very creative with the colors you choose. For example, if I wanted to try to convey that my Indian was standing deep within a forest, I'd use lots of green for the shadow tones and the bottom of the face, to show the green light being reflected from all the trees he'd be surrounded by. If he was standing in an open field in very bright direct sunlight, I'd use more yellowish tones in the highlight areas...
I've found this to be very helpful in painting more realistic skin tones and faces.
I hope this helps!

Thanks Tony - glad you liked it!