Daily Vlog 174: Painting Purple Flesh

Transcript

Welcome to the Hobby Nomicon. This is day 175 and today we’re going to finish up the skin on our cool dude that we made. We’re multitasking today—I’m trying to get the rest of my Pillillage stuff built so I can do a priming session later.

Base Coating with Scale 75

We’ve already done two coats of Scale Color Dark Violet over the black. Now I’m going up to Violet. I’m not going to use my wet palette for this pass—I’m just going to try to get the shadows where I want them. I’ve been a little unsure about how I wanted to paint the skin, but I’ve got an idea now.

With these Scale Color paints, once this dries it’s going to be way less bright and obnoxious. I love these violets. I’m leaving the deep cracks as Dark Violet and intentionally staying out of those recesses. I should have left some of the rock the darker shade, but we’re just trying to have fun with this guy. I don’t want to stress over it, especially while I’m painting that Infinity model—that’s pure stress. This one is just vibes.

Layering and Color Control

We’re effectively just layering here. With these Scale Color paints, you can change the color intensity by mixing in more or less water. You can actually shade the colors with themselves sometimes because they have so much pigment. High-quality paints really open up a whole new world of options. I’m painting the toes with this shade, leaving the old purple in the cracks between them.

This model is pretty much a palette cleanser. I’m going to submit it to the competition, but my goal is just to submit as many things as I can. I want to try my hardest, but I’m not putting several hundred hours into this one—I want to see what kind of cool effects I can get.

The Happy Accident

Here’s where things got interesting. I’ve been glazing a little on the neck, shoulders, back, and legs with straight Violet from Scale Color—about 50/50 water, normal glaze consistency, focusing on highlighted spots.

But then I was about to kick things up a notch and the paint was too wet. When I first touched it to the shoulder, it created this chalky effect. I panicked for a second, then decided to lean into it. I was going to glaze him just like I planned, but we’re really going to kick it up a notch. The chalkiness and textures underneath would actually come through in an interesting way.

Embracing the Chaos

I threw the plan out the window and just started vibing. I’ve got a pink, a very warm white, and the violet/purple midtone. I’m mixing these on the wet palette—and this is the real benefit of a wet palette and these Scale Color paints. You can treat them like oils.

I’m doing base coats, glazing, wet blending, and layering all at the same time, just using different consistencies and shades. A quick and dirty wet blend here—dark tone on the palette, highlight, midtone in the middle.

I’m using a wide, pretty janky brush to create textures across the skin tones. I’m letting those brush strokes build up texture and highlights on the skin. This is almost like how Richard Gray approaches non-metallic metallics in the early stages—a series of brush scratches on the surface, then I’ll glaze back over top to establish actual skin tone so it doesn’t look like obvious brush strokes.

The Glaze That Ties It Together

I put a ton more water on the wet palette and mixed the midtone into the mess I had. Now I’m using this glaze over everything. It’s about 50% paint, 50% water—not as juicy as the original glaze that messed me up. This glaze brings everything back down, unifies all those scratchy brush strokes, and makes them look like intentional skin texture while keeping our painterly, cartoonish, creepy look. Is cartoon grim dark a thing?

I’m covering everything—grabbing dark tones for the shadows, pink for the highlights, and wet blending it in. When you’re painting like this, you’ve got to push it to full send. Dark shadows, bright highlights, because when it dries it all comes back down.

Final Highlights

The paint’s starting to dry, so now I’m coming in with purple mixed with that warm white and a proper brush—a size one sable. Edge highlighting all the rounded surfaces, stippling the raised areas, putting a very thin line down the arms and onto the hands. It looks crazy with the paint wet, but it all darkens as it dries.

I wanted to show the full workflow because I messed up, and I think it’s important to show that. I totally wrecked this model with that first glaze, but by going through it and coming out the other side, it looks pretty gnarly—which is what I was going for. Controlled gnarly, not obviously-slapped-paint-on-it gnarly.

Wrapping Up

We jammed on it for about two hours in real time. I’m not quite done, but I made a lot of progress. This was a lot of fun. It’s not the direction I intended when I started painting, but I think it’s going to be pretty cool by the end. I want to come back in with a few more glazes because I’m worried the contrast might be too extreme—a little too much of a gap between the lowest lows and highest highs. I also want to take a couple spots to squid pink, really pink, just to make it look super ridiculous.

The skin is almost like a cartoon style. I’m really liking it. Thanks for watching.