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For my project this term I am creating a makeup that includes a prosthetic that needs to be skin coloured, specifically match my models skin tone. Therefore I plan to research realistic silicone skin painting by Artist Tim Gore and also Stuart Brays colour matching tutorial. 

 

 

 

 

Hyper Realistic Silicone Painting

Tim Gore

Special Effects Artist and Extreme Painter

 

For Stan Winston School of Character Arts

Fig. 19.1

Fig. 19.5

Fig. 19.7

Fig. 19.6

Fig. 19.4

Fig. 19.2

Fig. 19.3

I understand that the tutorial pictured below is for a silicone bust, but I still wanted to get some tips about colour choices and applicaiton from it. 

 

For this tutorial Tim Gore is using an un-encapsulated silicone head. That he refers to as Creepy Joe.

 

One of the most important things about painting silicone is the base colour. That is where the paint job can go good or bad right away.

 

Areas of the face that are more translucent include, eye bags, eye lids, ears, nostrils. The rest of the face isn’t too translucent.

 

For this head Tim needs the base pigment colour to be neutral, with no tones of red, orange, green etc.

If you arn’t doing a skin tone, for example, making an blue alien, or red devil, still use a neutral base colour, but not flat white.

 

So transposing this to a prosthetic piece, ideally you want it to match your model’s skin tone as closely as possible, but what I gather from this tutorial is that if you mix silicone for a makeup, it is best that the prosthetic is under pigmented rather than over pigmented, because you can always add these tones to the paint job after.

You don’t want to overpaint silicone, because it defeats the purpose of it being silicone.

 

Use a vinyl glove when using naptha, if you use a latex glove, the naptha will seep through and destroy the glove.

 

The materials

Oil Paints colours and order of application. (Fig. 19.4)

 

  • Titanium White (which you tone down to an off white with burnt ubmer)

  • sallow blue

  • Sap green (forest green- more blue)

  • Violet (dark purples. But avoid magenta)

  • Yellow ochre

  • Burnt sienna

  • Alizarin crimson

  • Burnt umber

 

(Blue and orange can screw you up instantly if you mess them up straight away.

Blue will make it grey and orange will make it too tan.)

 

Clear Silicone number 1 Caulking.

Naptha

Oil Paints

 

  • really watery/ thin milk. About 10:1 naptha to caulking ratio.

 

 

Subtlety is key. Thin layers build up. Translucent is key.

 

Mixing Silicone Paint

For this paint job, Tim Gore mixes his paints with a small whisk into separate pots. (Fig. 19.5)

Paint Application Techniques-

1). Chip brush.

Keep the brushes long- reason being. When I spatter this colour I want the spatters to bleed, and layer better that way.

If I cut it short, what you end up with is a lot finer more precise splattering. It unifies the size of the spatter, and you get a more speckled look.

2). Airbrush- Especially for finer details like mottling and veining. Can also be used for splattering (using pencil technique.)

Below is an example of the final finished head by Tim gore. Notice the red mottling especially on the cheeks and top of the ears, as well as the veins in the eyes and the shadow of the beard. I think this is an excellent paint job. He has even made the mouth look wet by using laquer. 

Colour Picking Vid by Stuart Bray

Fig. 19.8

Fig. 19.9

Pale Skin Silicone Swatches

Because my model is so pale, i think it is necessary to make some swatches up so that I can compare them to my model's skin tone and chose the correct colour. 

Below I have taken a lipstick decanting palette and used AB pro-gel silicone from Ps Composites, then in various translucencies i have added pigment with varying flocking colours to achieve the sifferent shades. 

On the lid I wrote what all the different ones contained. so i can replicate it.

In this video Stuart Uses photoshop to more accurately chose colours for intrinsically colouring silicone prosthetics. 

In this video he gives the example of a silicone flat piece that was too light for the skin it was applied to. 

He uses the eyedropper tool to select the colour that he wants to match with, on the skin, and it opens another window that shows the exact colour that you have chosen wtih all the percentages of the RGB. 

 

My Attempt

 

 

 

Fig. 19.15

Fig. 19.14

Fig. 19.13

Fig. 19.12

Fig. 19.11

Fig. 19.10

The latest version of Photoshop is a little different, it shows the colour picker in a circle. But this technique is still useful. However you have to be carful because the colour in photographs is adjusted differently to real life, because of saturation, and shadows. Therefore this is only a guideline. 

One thing I am surprised about is how pink the skin is. more than i thought he was. In Fig. 19.13 i have taken the colours from the swatches and applied them onto a white background to really get the true colour. 

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