Seraphine skin tutorial

As promised - here is the first part of the Seraphine Le Roux skin tutorial from Ali. She didn't take pictures of the original Seraphine - so this is a whole new version we'll be showing stage by stages photos from over the next few days.

The photos are largely self explanatory - the shots of the palette go with the picture above, and show the progression of the skin tones lightening as the highlights are applied. Here are some quick notes to accompany the pictures, the numbers correspond to the photograph -

1 - Base coat with a rich chocolate brown, being careful to not apply it too thickly and obscure the detail on the face. As usual - it's best to apply several thin coats rather than one thick one.

2 - To highlight black skin, add a warm skin tone (the one Ali actually uses is Butter Fudge from the Foundry range). Adding white would totally skew the colour and make it far too chalky. Follow the lines of the limbs when applying the highlights - apply small amount at a time and carefully blend the edges with a damp brush. It can be useful to hold the miniature under a desk lamp - and see where the light naturally hits the surface.

The highlights are applied thinly and build up slowly in layers - the successive coats will become more opaque and intense as they are applied. Just keep going until you are happy with the effect. You'll find that you cover a lot of the base coat with this first layer of highlights.

3 - The next layer is quite a bit lighter - add more of the fudge colour and some light flesh tone for this. With this application you will cover smaller areas of the surface - usually in the centre of the last area of highlight. See picture 4.

5 - Ali wanted her skin to appear sweaty and glistening, so there was a big jump in the final level of highlighting - and it was applied in very specific places. - A thin line down the front of the leg and dot on the knee, down the length of both forearms, a dot on the bottom edge of the belly button, a dot which is blended horizontally across each breast, the bridge of the foot, curve of the thigh, base of the back, and shoulder blades and buttock.

6 - The final stage was to add some deep shading to better define the shape of the body. This was a mix of the base colour and blue ink.

That's it for the body - Ali took pictures while she was painting the face (which is usually a different process), and I'll post them here shortly.

cheers!

mike