munny project - part III

brushes and paint: i just started with a few brushes that came in a set from my local art store. as i started painting i bought more depending on what i needed for the project and now i have a collection of brushes. what to look out for is to buy the brushes according to the paint you're going to use. personally use acrylics for my munnys so i buy brushes made for acrylics. i'm not painting masterpiece so i don't need boar or horse hair bristles, synthetic brushes would do, although the horse and boar brushes do last longer. there are also a lot of different shapes for the brushes, i tend to mainly use a flat to cover large areas and detailer for details.

i mix my paint on a glass plate so i can put plastic wrap on it when i'm not using and it somewhat keeps it from drying out. it's really tough to mix a color and then have to reproduce it with the right ratios of color, so preserving the color before it dries helps when you're painting different colors. also when you're done you can just scrape it off where as those plastic palettes they sell at art stores tend to stain.

sketch: before any painting can be done, a sketch drawn is crucial. people don't build houses without blueprints and it's a good thing they don't. this is where you can work out a lot of the problems you'd would otherwise encounter while painting without one. it'll save you a lot of headache and time. a lot of problem solving and planning ahead is required before the first brush stroke.

i'm planning on painting the arm with three different colors, the top of it white, the middle a flesh color and the bottom part of it yellow. it's easier to paint a darker color on top of a lighter color if i mess up on the paint so i'll start with the white and work myself down. i'm planning on masking to get clean lines, but because white' the first color and i'm going to color a flesh tone over it the white doesn't need to masked, so right there i save myself the headache of repainting layers of white to fix a problem by painting white first, and i save myself the time by not having to mask.

a good place to go for templates is at http://www.customtoylab.com/templates/