Steampunk Alien Bust

Saw this on Facebook 2 weeks ago, and well.. I had to have it! So much character in it and I can already feel inspiration pouring into me from it!

Combine this with my recent trip up north for an airbrush workshop with John and you have a recipe for awesomeness!

Heck I even jumped straight into it as soon as I got it unpacked and took to the airbrush immediately ( ok.. after washing and GS layers on the head to smooth it out more! ).

As you can see.. not a full coverage of the model here in Liquid Green Stuff.. Just on the spots where I would want to have the smoothest sections to really play around with. It wasn't terrible there, but I just wanted to make sure that paint would look that proper smoothness there more so than other sections. Since everywhere else is textured for the skin I figured I should attempt some nice smoother transitions on the top portions.

From here we do the primer... German Panzer Grey. Why this and not black? Cause my black was missing at the moment ( not missing, not lost, but I think it went for a walk on me! )... so this was the next dark color I had around.

Even just this began to scare me on the piece. I was thinking at this point.. "mmmm maybe I should do a dark skin tone like shades here.. and like almost a black leather like texture... " but that was soon passed as I wanted to go for a more creepy flesh like skintone for it.

This is after a single pass of Scale75's Pink Flesh color. It didn't give complete coverage, but began to give me a sense of where this piece was going to go.

Here I got another layer of the Pink Skin laid down, and also began the shadows with Iridium Skintone. Which is a lot more redder than I originally thought, but was liking the new direction it was taking me :)

For the highlights I just went with the Scale75 Pale Skintone. Trying to hit the highest points throughout the piece. At this point I can begin to see the colors direction on the piece. I know that in the BAM class we did pre-painting sketches for the busts.. and in the basing class we did sketches.. well.. I have a confession to make here.. I can't draw and thus sketches never really work out too well for me :D

It is far easier for me to just start on the model itself and see where the piece takes me. What colors call out to me. Now that I see it to be more of a red/purple color as the primary color we can play around from here. Ideas for different hues and colors to be introduced into the model are beginning to come into focus for me.

So after misting the whole piece back with the Pink Skintone once more, I also tried to add a bit more shadows to it to further push it. There is a lot more that is needed to be done there.. but it is beginning to move in a direction that I think I can handle.

And this is how far I have gotten after 2 hrs of playing around with colors and the airbrushes.

Next things to do is to think about a secondary color for the skintone to make a pattern or something on it. To give it a bit more character instead of a straight single tone here. Am thinking something within the same range but more into the browns? Will see on that and see what comes of it.

I also think I will try some dotting or splatter on it in places. Like birthmarks or something? Not sure how to explain it but we will see how it goes once I get a better chance to tackle it.

The biggest challenges that I will yet to hit will be how to make the skintone have a bit more life in it overall! Let's see how I can do this in the future. :)

Thoughts so far on the piece? Ideas on how to move forward?