October 7, 2010

How to paint the "bone" look

Here's a little tutorial on how to give the appearance of bone:
Sculpt the figure you want in white clay. Can be polymer, paperclay or any other air dry.

1- First thing you do is gesso it, with the solution a little diluted with water so you don't lose detail. In this case I had a lot of "cracks" that I wanted to show. Use a soft brush so it won't give you deep brush marks. Let it dry well.

2- Once it is dry, give it a coat of watery black acrylic paint. Not too watery, so you really stain the gesso. Let it dry for a couple of minutes.



3- Get a wet sponge and rub the piece until most of the black paint is gone but not so much that it shows the white gesso again. Let it dry. Make sure you stain your under your fingernails as well, eww!




4- Once it is dry you will give it a dry brush coat with just the tiniest drop of yellow paint, dust the brush on all the bumpy areas, making sure it looks transparent and not solid yellow. If you painted it too much, get the sponge and rub gently. Let it dry, that should be really fast.

5- Give it another dry brush coat of white paint, making sure you neither cover the black or yellow, just highlight the bumps.




6- Detail with more black paint as needed, dry, varnish with Satin finish and you are done! You can do a whole body or just parts. In this case I added a magnet.

You can have a cookie now :o)

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12 comments:

  1. Great tutorial! Never would have imagined gesso would work so well for that. :D

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  2. Excellent! Thanks so much Martha!

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  3. Great tut. Gesso is so versatile... :)

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  4. Great tutorial! Totally spot on with the bone look!

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  5. Great tutorial! Hahaha I like the result: skull or "death-head" Totenkopf as it is called in German ;-) Waving back to you (with my hand) ;-)

    Byebye Ayala

    Can you tell I'm having fun?

    Ilona

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    1. I like that word, I learned a new thing today then :o)

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  6. Oh what a fab idea and I am so pleased you have shared this with us. I hope you have some more Martha I know you have done a cracking paper doll aswell so I hope you will join again next week. :)
    ManonX

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  7. oh wow!!! that is so cool!!!!

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  8. I will come back here Halloween. Talking of black fingernails - I had an appt at the doc's on Friday and red and green stained fingers and nails - nice! Valerie

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I ♥ all your comments! ~
. .Keep your paintbrush wet!