Some FAQs answered...

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Just thought I'll take this opportunity to post some answers to some reoccurring questions from a recent email to kick start the new year.

When you talk about using washes to smooth over the dry brushing, what type of brushes are you talking about?For smoothing large areas, I use the cheap synthetic nylon brushes. No particular reason as they are cheap.

When you apply the wash do you apply it to the whole figure or to the shadow areas only?I seldom apply the wash throughout the whole figure unless I wish to alter the tone of the colour. But often than not, the washes are applied to specific areas like the shadows, mid-tones etc…

Do you use highlight washes or just apply the highlights that have been thinned down?
I use a highlight colour that has been thinned down to a CONSISTENCY of a WASH.
Two factors are critical in the painting of tonal transition on the figure; FLOW and OPACITY.
OPACITY is affected by how much the paint is thinned and the ideal opacity should be about 1 part of paint to 4 parts of water.
Amount of paint loaded onto the brush affects the FLOW of paint. Too much paint on the brush will cause the paint to flood all over the figure’s surface resulting in water marks. Always UNLOAD the excess paint onto a piece of cloth or napkin and TESTING it on a piece of paper prior to application. The ideal condition of paint on the brush should be MOIST and not wet. It's usually inevitable to repeat the process to attain the desired result.

Here's also the usual line-up of colours I regularly use for painting flesh tones. If time permits, I'll try to present more of my colour mixes such as Field Grey, Oak-Leaf camo etc.. this way as it saves a lot of time typing the names of the ingredient colours.

cheers,

Calvin