Painting Skye and Tumult

You can now find photos of the finished figures here at my site, and
here at deviantart. ETA: and here at tumblr.

The girls, accompanied by Tumult's auntie Shredder, whose colour palette is close to Tumult's so she makes a good reference on that.

After her first partial coat, Tumult has gotten a second coat of watered-down acrylic paint, this one is mostly raw sienna with a bit of white.

The plastic on her figure is glossy enough that paint takes a couple of layers to stick to it well. I'm building up her colour gradually with multiple, thin layers instead of trying to get her covered with her final colour in one go, because that would require applying the paint thickly enough it would dry very streaky.

Skye's materials work a bit differently. Watery paint doesn't spread well on polymer clay, but paint that's not watered down sticks to it well enough that it does only need one coat for full cover. I'm rubbing the paint in all the feather detail dips and crevices to not have any white spots peeking out later.

Epoxy putty is glossier than polymer clay, but doesn't need as many coats as the factory-made figures' plastic does, and it's also suited for painting on it with watered-down paint. Skye's feet are mostly painted already here, because when the paint on my palette starts drying up, I can add a bit of water and still use it on the epoxy putty parts even if it's too watery for polymer clay.

The silk clay on Skye's neck also gets paint that isn't watered down, because air-dry clay reacts to water even when already dried if there's no protective coating. When the paint dries, it should become such coating.

3½ coats of Tumult's base colour, and 2 coats of underbelly colour, which needed less building since it's lighter and the figure was originally white there. Her base colour is a mix of mostly raw sienna, some burnt umber, and a small amount of the paint just labeled as light brown that I used as the base colour of juvie Tumult (and Tempest). Her underbelly is the same paints but white instead of light brown.

Tumult also has a bit of epoxy putty under one foot to help her stand more steadily. I still had her lean on things for a lot of her stay on the work table, and had supports around both her and Skye even when they weren't touching those supports and could stand on their own, so I wouldn't knock them over when reaching for things and such.

Skye with the underbelly colour on her neck and chest mostly painted, and before getting her blue face markings.

Her base colour is mixed from black&white, leaf green, and turquoise; her underbelly is black&white, raw sienna, and yellow; the purple-grey markings she'll get later are black&white, primary cyan, and crimson red. Not sure that's relevant information for anyone else, but I listed the paints I used when posting about painting juvie Skye, and that was pretty helpful for now having to mix the same colours three years later.

But tiny Skye makes a good colour reference, too. She's grown so much! Tiny Tumult also stopped by as pattern reference for big Tumult. I'd made a reference sheet on paper for her (slightly visible in the first photo), but I needed extra help figuring out how some of the stripes wrap around her tail and limbs.

Starting on Tumult's stripes with a mix of burnt umber and crimson red. I added more markings and more layers to the markings in several painting sessions, and touched up her base colour and underbelly along the way, too, until I got each to mostly even colours and the markings as dark and clear as I wanted. Tail left for last, as it was convenient to hold the figure by while painting the rest.

Skye got most of her face finished before moving on to working on the rest of her, as I didn't want to end up holding her by a spot that has still-drying paint on it, either, while focusing on being precise with tiny details, of which her face has many.

She has her black crest (mars black mixed with some ultramarine), and highlights on her brows after that, then blue feathers on the brows after that. The green-grey on her face has also gotten some subtle highlights with a lighter shade of the colour, and specks and dots with the darker purple-grey. The three dark scales on her upper lip on each side are applied by using the round end of a sewing pin as a dotting tool. The scale blobs are still a bit 3D when dry. I tweaked the black "eyeliner" with paint at this stage, having focused more on the shape of the clay there when sculpting her. I painted a bit over the black with green-grey and blue at the outer corners so it ends in more of a point.

She also has quite a bit of shiny on her. The blue markings on her face and her blue crest feathers have metallic blue paint on them, and two of the three blue dots on the left side have a piece of glitter glued to each with wet paint. Her eyes also eventually got a coat of gloss varnish.

Tumult's eyes got to keep their original colour for the most part, but I painted her pupils a bit larger and gave them white shine dots, and a stripe of lighter and brighter orange on each side of the pupils. The bright orange is glow-in-the-dark paint! Since Skye and the kids have glow-in-the-dark polymer clay on their eyes, now Tumult doesn't have to feel left out.

I also gave her lower gums a bit of pale pink paint, so her mouth isn't all white, and to cover up that the factory paint on the teeth was kind of messy.

Tumult's foot claws were already painted, other than the dewclaw, so I painted that and her finger claws to match. Starting to have all her stripes here.

And some purple accents, to match with the wife. :)

I painted over parts of her stripes with a mix of crimson red, ultramarine, and a tiny bit of white for opacity.

Once that had dried, she got the final touches of sparkly dots. Her light purple dots are some regular acrylic paint, some pearlescent puff paint. In addition to that she has metallic bronze and copper acrylic paint dotted on her base colour and stripes, respectively.

With that, she is done! And had better go keep her kids company at the bookcase they've been sitting in waiting for their photoshoot, who knows what mischief they've gotten up to unsupervised.

Still quite a bit of work left on Skye (though she did spend a day at the bookcase when drying the varnish on her eyes, to be left alone somewhere I'm less likely to stir up dust to float onto her just by moving near her).

Painting the ventral sides of her wings was as difficult as I'd expected, thanks past me for sculpting them like that. After drying the first coat of each wing colour, the dorsal side got some drybrushing with a lighter shade of the green-grey, and a lighter and brighter purple (no black mixed in).

I also took the time to tidy up the borders between her base colour and underbelly on her neck, shoulders, and snout, and add a bit of a darker shade of the underbelly colour to the smile creases at the corners of her mouth.

Wing stripes. I painted them with a darker shade first to get a clearer difference between colours, then drybrushed the stripes with a lighter shade. I added the black dorsal coverts last because covering up lighter colours with black is easier than the other way around.

Painting her underbelly and tidying up the borders between colours at her sides, too. Juvie Skye's colours are more faded together, but I wanted her adult plumage to have clearer borders for again a tidier look. Some of the border between underbelly and green-grey on her tail ended up being faded, though, since I thought it suited the more fluffy texture of the feathers there.

Also painting those ventral covert markings she has. I painted the dots first with blue mixed with white about half and half, then added more colour and variation, since it's light on dark.

Finishing the feet. At this point she really looks like she's wearing white pants. I mostly held her by the base of the tail, knees, and lower back. Despite the clear colour borders in a lot of her plumage, I like painting scutes a bit messily, like how I colour them in my drawings.

The tail got both of its main colours on it gradually while working on other parts. When mixing a colour for fine details, like cleaning up colour borders, I often don't need all the paint I mixed for just that, so I try to find a spot where I can put the rest of the paint in broader strokes before it dries on the palette (which is actually a piece of cardboard from some food packaging, or several pieces).

Adding the blue stripe, and cleaning the greys around it. Skye's stripe is a gradient of three different blues (much like Dawn's, though he only got two). I guess it's actually four for Skye since I left a lot of the blue polymer clay's colour visible, too, where I'd used it.

Such as on her sides.

Stripes for the pants. A lot of the green-grey on them is again "leftovers" from painting more carefully around the blue markings.

And little by little, filling in the rest of the green-greys and underbelly colour, and adding the little purple feathertip markings. Final touches were adding some metallic blue to the stripe in parts of the tail.

She is finally all done and ready for their big photoshoot! Photos of the finished figures can be found here at my site, here at deviantart, and here at tumblr.

Remember when she used to fit on top of her dad's head? :')