Watercolors - the undo button for your kits

How many times have you heard this? “As long as you seal it with dull coat, you can wipe the paint off with some airbrush thinner and a q-tip...” How many times have you done this not only to remove your mistake, but everything else down to the bare resin! Maybe never, but I finally got tired of striping kits, and started using more watercolors to reduce this risk...
I was given a couple of busts to experiment with from Mike Parks of Mad Labs. One was a cute “Little Annie Fanny” from Playboy fame, the other a Bride of Frankenstein. Based on Frank Dietz’s Sketchy Things, the Bride looks like Mike pulled it right off the paper into 3d. This thing gave me a chuckle, with her wild expression, so I decided to use her.

The bust was nicely cast, with very little cleanup necessary except for a minor seam along the left side of her face. A little scrubbing with dish soap and a toothbrush to remove any mold release, some Krylon white sandable primer and she’s ready to go.

I started off with a mixture of Liquitex light portrait pink, Apple Barrel powder blue and dolphin gray for a basecoat. This was a nice pale cool pink color. Doesn't take me long to break out the watercolors...they’re the next step.
For starters, you can pick up a decent set from any craft store pretty cheap. I have since ended up with a good collection of Windsor and Newton tubes, which run about $2.50 or if your lucky 2 bucks on sale. They seem to have a finer grain, and are a little easier to work with. Don’t worry that little tube will last you forever. Also, don’t try the watercolors that come in the tray, you know, the little cakes? Trust me, they don’t work.

Lets talk about airbrushing with them. This can be a bit tricky. Mix them too thin, and they will bead up on the surface. Too thick, and you might as well be spraying with acrylics. The thing I like about airbrushing with watercolors is their transparency. You can get some really nice subtle effects, that “under the skin” stuff I always destroy when trying to mist over some secondary colors. The best thing I have found to mix with is good old blue windshield wiper fluid. Yeah it’s blue, but it won’t effect the color of your paint. Even white stays white. This stuff seems to have just the right amount of whatever to make the watercolors dry just fast enough for spraying, without beading. It has a nice tooth to it and mixes up the paint quickly and smoothly. I have also had luck with a mix of distilled water and alcohol, with a drop of dish soap. This is also tricky, because just too much alcohol will cause the watercolors to clump. Weird. Thin your paint even more so than you would a wash. Turn down the psi on your tank or compressor to about 2 or 5, and start spraying. You can get real close to the kit, almost touching it. Just spray back and forth, building up the color to your liking. You don’t have to worry about mixing your flesh tone with some variation of color. If you want redder tones to your skin, just mix up some burnt sienna and spray that. You mix the colors on the kit. I’ve also found that I can get a much thinner line with watercolors than I can with acrylics, almost pencil thin. Great for mottling effects. You never have to worry about clogging, or even setting your brush down for an extended period of time. Watercolors never truly dry, so even months later your airbrush will clean out like a dream. Here’s the kicker. Lets say you did get a clump in the brush, or your finger slips, and you just splattered paint all over your kit. Dontcha just hate that? Well in this case the old saying is true. As long as you dull coated before you started spraying the watercolors, they wipe off perfectly, with plain old water. Even reds and blues, you know, those colors that are hard as hell to get off, and even black on top of white wipes off without any evidence of being there. And you don’t have to worry about the water eating through your dull coat.... unless you live in Jersey.

For the Bride I sprayed some turquoise around the edges of the face, and in the shadows, working my way lightly out towards the midtones. Some rose madder was used on the cheeks, temples, and sides of her nose, chin, jaw line and the tips of her ears. Where this intersected with the turquoise created a kind of purple color, so I sprayed some mauve into the shadows. Watercolors work so good for this, because you can get right in there, in those hard to reach folds and crevices, working your way out. In this case, the results were not what I was used to, for I had started with such a light basecoat. Usually I start of with a medium color, add some secondary colors, shading, then highlights. So I was forced to mist over the kit, which for once turned out well. She needed a little more shading though, so I used some payne’s gray and fixed her up.

But wait! There’s more! I admit, spraying with watercolor doesn't seem worth spending a lot of extra money on supplies, but for painting faces and details, I find them indispensable.

Hand painting is a little more straight forward, but there are some things to look out for. Doing spot washes with them is pretty handy, but require a different technique. For some eye shadow, I darkened up some turquoise with intense blue, and made a thin wash using distilled water. Dip the brush in the wash, and wipe some of it off, kind of like dry brushing. “Scrub” the area you want to paint, trying not to go over one area too much or it won’t be even. It’s hard to describe; you’ll just have to experiment. Watercolors are so delicate that if you go back over them, you’ll lift them up again. It would be just as well to do this with the airbrush, while you have it out. If you get too much on her brow, or to far from the edges, just dab the paint off with a q-tip and water. I guess what I’m leading up to is sometimes painting on top of watercolors you’ve laid down can be a pain in the neck. Even after two coats of clear lacquer, I’ve had the stuff lift off. Usually two light coats of dull coat will do, but I’m just warning ya. I have never had a problem using a liquid mask on top of them.

Another problem can occur if you apply the color too thick. I washed some burnt sienna and mauve in the Bride’s mouth, and around her gums. Since I started out with white, the gums ended up with some natural highlights, the watercolors tinting the highest points, and drying darkest in the recesses. I gave the roof of her mouth a thicker coat. I lightened the color with white, and dabbed this on her tongue, letting the colors mix and give me an irregular pattern. Looked kind of cool. I guess in this case brushing on top of other colors worked out to my advantage. Here’s the nuisance. When I dull coated, it reacted to the watercolors on the roof of her mouth, cracking the paint. I’ve only had this happen to me a few times over the years, and usually its because I flood the kit with too much lacquer, and the watercolors were too thick. In this case, I could have just painted the roof with acrylics, but I already had the color I wanted out, and in keeping with the article, it served to remind me of another thing to watch out for. As always, a couple of light coats of dull coat serve best.

Painting hairlines is a breeze. Just as watercolors are transparent while spraying, they are opaque and solid while hand brushing. I can get the finest lines with these, and if I had tried thinning some acrylics to do the same line, they would be too watery and transparent. Start somewhere slightly past where the hairline is sculpted, and start drawing lines back into the hair. Keep with the sculpted pattern, and try to evenly space them. In this case, I switched to a thicker brush, for a more cartoony look. Use acrylics for the rest of the hair, once you get the outline done, or you’ll have a hell of a time putting a wash on it. Trust me. Again, there is no stress involved, as if it doesn't look right, just hit the undo button. You spent all that time getting your flesh tones just right, you don’t want to screw it up now.

Eyes. I won’t even paint eyes now without watercolors. I used to hate painting them. Now it’s actually fun. Basecoat the eye color with acrylic, your favorite recipe (in this case I used unbleached titanium, payne’s gray, and raw sienna), add some highlights, and then dull coat. On this kit the pupils are sculpted in. On the average, the challenge is getting both eyes even, and looking in the same direction! Basecoat these in black. If you don't get them even, sometimes you can “push” the paint around a bit with a damp brush. Otherwise, just put a drop of water in there, and use a q-tip to suck up the offending paint and try again. You can also experiment with different expressions, to see which one you like. Looking up, right, rolled back, etc... Once I get the outline of the pupil painted, I paint the inside with a dark version of the eye color with acrylic. In the Bride’s case, it was hooker’s green. Bring this to the outermost edge of the pupil, and if you get a little mixing, so much the better. Eyes have a lot of different colors in them. Most blue or green eyes have a little brown in the center, or a pale gray, or a raw sienna color to them. Find some close up pictures of eyes and examine them. With watercolors, you can get those “rays” in there, and get some really cool results, especially on busts and larger scale kits. Don’t forget to add some highlights. Dull coat the eyes again. I don’t know about you, but that pink ridge under the eye always gave me trouble. Do this with a watercolor wash, no problem. It almost seems like a “smarter” paint, and really finds those edges well, and sticks to them. Put a little of this color in the edges of the eyes as well. Want them bloodshot? No problem, you’ve got all the time you need to get all those little veins juuust where you want them. Try painting the eyelashes with watercolors and you’ll never go back. Instead of just drawing a line, go back and draw some individual lines along the outer edges of the upper lashes, and inner edges of the lower lashes. Pull the upper ones up and out, and the lower ones down and in. Great for female kits.

Okay, you’ve got the face all painted, and the clothes. Maybe you just pulled the masking off the skin and you don’t have an exactly sharp line along the edges of the shirt. No problem. Touch up your edges with some watercolors. I try to keep most of the same colors in watercolors as I do in acrylics, for touch up work. Since the pigment is finer, you can get a nice clean, even and smooth line. Much better than with acrylics. If that neck doesn't seem to be in that shirt, which happens to me a lot with white shirts, take a thin gray wash of watercolors, and draw a line in between the skin and shirt.
Jewelry is another good candidate. Basecoat with black before dry brushing your enamels. Adding a pattern to clothing, tattoos, anywhere your afraid of messing up, or just want to experiment.

Check out some of the mediums they have for these. There is a “granular medium” which I played with a little on the Brides pedestal. Cool for stone work, and I may try using this for some skin mottling in the future. There is also an “iridescent medium“, if you want to make your own metallic colors.

Start using these babies and you’ll find the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. As a matter of fact, if you haven’t thrown down this issue and ran to the store yet, do so now! You will be sold. You will be assimilated. Watercolors....they’re not just for landscapes anymore.

BACK TO ARTILCES

BACK TO MENU