Painting mouths, ears, hair, etc.

I use a white 3 x 5 card with a hole punched in it to look at skin color and value. I have to use devices like this because it forces me to see things I easily could miss. By laying it against a flesh color, I can more easily see if it is yellowish, orange, pink, blue, or even green. It's surprisingly useful. 

I forgot last week to include info on painting a mouth. Here is Yong Chen's video on painting a mouth, including an open smile. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkXLkcHu7wQ&t=188s

To paint an open-mouth smile, teeth showing, there are a few tips.

1. to do teeth, paint the gum line around the teeth

2. the inside of the mouth is warm, not gray or blue

3. the lower lip is almost always wider than the upper lip, and lighter in color.

4. Paint the midline of the lip first.

5. The upper lip is thinner and darker because it is more shadowed and it has more blood vessels.

6. The teeth are usually not pure white. And the further back in the mouth they recede, the darker they are. Otherwise they make the mouth look quite flat and clown like.

Painting ears

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhR9TIgB0uE

Painting hair. Basically, you start with the lightest value, dry; next value, dry; and finally darkest values.

It is surprising how dark blonde hair can be in the shadows, and how much color can be reflected.

Kirsty Partridge Art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7aiE8cQCSs

Yong Chen's video on hair

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxZC60siH4Q

Try not to get overwhelmed with the hair. Leave highlights, even in very dark hair. I usually paint the skin color right into the scalp before painting the hair. Most hair is a combination of 2 colors, burnt sienna and blue. The darker and more burnt sienna, the browner. Even blonde hair is shadowed with a light version of these colors. Black hair, if it has blue highlights, can have undertones of blue. I still don't usually use a black paint, but a dark versions of burnt sienna and French ultramarine.

If a highlight is white, I will mask out some curls or highlights. But not much.

FINISHING THE LOOSE PAINTING

Now that you have a background, you basically need to find the darkest spots and paint those shadows in.

First I paint in things I want to be flesh tones, so I don't lose that color. You'll see there is a lot of yellow on the left side. I painted in the nostrils and lifted a little on the tip, then added a red on the very tip of the nose. 

Then I concentrate on shadows and deeper tones. You don't necessarily use flesh tones in these areas, depending on the age of the person.I darkened beneath the chin. 

On the hair, I just painted in some shadows. 

FINISHING THE REALISTIC

I wet the skin again, and paint in shadows around the eyes, paying attention to my cools and warms.

I gradually build up the forms wet into wet for the first few rounds, especially the largest shapes.

Here I've rewet the face and put in a more dense version of the skin color.

Focused on putting a more dense paint of the basic skin tone around the nose and areas of shadow.

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I put in some blue shadows around the shadowed cheek, under the hat, etc. I also began painting around the eyes.

I painted in the base color for the hat. I put a layer of yellow paint on the entire face. Dried and painted in the lips.I started putting in details of the ear. 

Then I made a dark background of deep green (made from sap green and purple), and painted in the lips.

I painted eyebrows and nostril and darkened around the hair. I repaired the eye on the right.

 Then I used a lifting brush around highlighted areas: the lips, nose tip and outer nostril, and repaired the eye. Then I put in a highlight in the eyes and hair wisps.