Painting seamless bodies (NSFW?)

You did it, welcome to the circle! xD
Turned out great.
And thanks Gubernator for the nice words, haha, appreciated.

Looking at the pictures I have to think of the Anaconda Malt Liquor conspiracy from Black Dynamite. (Only watch to the end if you are ok with looking at the photos in the links above )

Here is my first attempt at painting/color matching a phicen body.  I used chalk pastels and massaged them into the body with a coarse paintbrush.

That Wolverine looks great. Nice job.

Looks really nice!! I always like the look of the chalk pastels, but worry about the colour transfer side of things. It's a really beautiful effect, and since it's a shirtless figure, probably worth it. : )

Thanks all. The pastels don't seem to be transferring, though I obviously haven't tested it out - as you said not planning on putting a shirt on him.

I have been thinking about adding some scars and blood work with silicon caulk and oil paint, haven't decided if I am going that direction though.

Anyone tried punching hairs in with a crown punch tool?

Worked out very nicely, though I'm hesitant to try chalk pastel. Keep us posted on how it holds up, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will be fine. If you mix pigment (ideally silicone pigment but acrylic paint would work too) with silicone (e.g., silicone glue), you could add scars and blood, and if you don't like it you can probably peel it off (with some effort) later. Alternately, see the posts about various pens and inks above, although I don't know how much of this would still be applicable to a body treated with chalk pastel. As for punching hairs, I would imagine that even if successful, the method would be too laborious and impractical; but really, I don't have the tool or a body I'm willing to currently damage this much (if the experiment fails and causes damage), so I just don't know.

GubernatorFan wrote:Worked out very nicely, though I'm hesitant to try chalk pastel. Keep us posted on how it holds up, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will be fine. If you mix pigment (ideally silicone pigment but acrylic paint would work too) with silicone (e.g., silicone glue), you could add scars and blood, and if you don't like it you can probably peel it off (with some effort) later. Alternately, see the posts about various pens and inks above, although I don't know how much of this would still be applicable to a body treated with chalk pastel. As for punching hairs, I would imagine that even if successful, the method would be too laborious and impractical; but really, I don't have the tool or a body I'm willing to currently damage this much (if the experiment fails and causes damage), so I just don't know.

Thanks GubernatorFan. Chalk can be a bit daunting but I find it is fairly forgivable. Pretty easy to hide all the "crimes".


I'll let everyone know, having said that I have some votoms toys I weathered using pastels over a decade ago that still look great. Obviously those were ABS and not silicon, but so far so good!

I remember Ephiane punching hair into (Mr Fantasy Beans?) legs, but she stopped as it took forever.

Round 2!  This time around I used pastel washes to paint the body rather than scrub in the colors.  I was extremely surprised and pleased to see the pigment stain the body and seems permanent.  Post process I washed the body in dish detergent with no visible difference to the process. Apologies for the crummy iPhone pic, I recently moved - I haven't dug out my photography equipment yet.

Wow, very cool process! :O And even more awesome looking results, thanks so much for sharing!

Stryker -- I wonder if this could be a way for you to make a more tanned body??

I’m curious to know what you mean by “washes”? Can you explain the process in more detail?

I am presuming it means dissolving the pigment in water and then applying with a brush, but I will await tbrisko's explanation...

I was curious about that too. And it did come out looking excellent!

Hi all,

Yes - a little more detail about the process:

I use artists soft chalk pastels - I diluted them in water roughly 1 part pigment (shaved off the pastel stick with either an emory board or x-acto) to 10 parts water.  I add a very small (one tiny drop) of dish detergent to break the surface tension when applied to the body.  If you don't add the detergent the wash will bead up and puddle on the body.

I then apply the wash to the body with a brush, working in sections to avoid pooling.  I blot off the excess with a clean microfiber cloth, leaving a natural pattern that blends in with the shapes of the body.

I did several coats, starting with blue/cyan for the shadows followed by reds/umber to give more depth.

I then went in with a mixture of a more concentrated cyan (about 5 parts water to 1 part pigment) to pick out the veins and then repeated that with red/umber for the nipples.

Lastly I washed the whole body in dish detergent and water to ensure it was well coated and that it wouldn't stain clothes, etc.

It takes a bit of practice to get comfortable with.  As you paint it on, you are removing about 80% of it.  Each coat you can barely tell anything was done, but after several coats build up you get a nice, natural depth of red/blue and umber.

The key is working in very translucent layers and not letting it pool or puddle too much in any place. Keep in mind if you don't like it, you can simply wipe it off until it sets. Having said that you have to work quickly as it only takes a 2-3 minutes for it to begin to set.

Thank you for the detailed explanation.

Thanks for the thorough breakdown. Very helpful.

Thanks -- that is indeed very good to know. And by 'dish detergent' do you mean the powdered kind you put in a dishwasher, or the liquid soap kind? I presume the latter, but just want to double check.

skywalkersaga wrote:Thanks -- that is indeed very good to know. And by 'dish detergent' do you mean the powdered kind you put in a dishwasher, or the liquid soap kind? I presume the latter, but just want to double check.

You presumed correctly Just a drop of dawn, etc. I believe the brand I had was seventh generation, but the chemistry should all be the same!

Great! Looking forward to trying it out .

Got some pastels in the mail from Dick Blick today, and I tried them out on a previously dyed s12. After experimenting a bit I figured out how to get the color to lay down more evenly and painted the figure's right leg a nice dark brown color. I had already dyed this one a lighter brown with Rit Dye, so I suppose it's not the same as using the oil pastel on a new, pale body. This method seems to offer more control in terms of getting the color you want for very dark skinned bodies than using Rit Dye, but it takes more work to get an even tone throughout.



Also, I didn't see it mentioned anywhere in this thread but there is a way to remove oil pastel from the bodies in case you have need of it. I just brushed on some Gamsol onto the back of this figure and it lifted the pastel off pretty easily. I didn't really try to clean it thoroughly since I was just testing it out, but I think you could remove nearly all of the pastel if you wanted to fix an error or start over again.



The middle portion of her back was originally as dark as her shoulders, but the solvent lifted basically all of the pastel out of the silicone. Thought some people might find that useful.

Nice work. What do you plan to do for the hands and feet?

Paint them with Vallejo acrylics.

gooboo wrote:Paint them with Vallejo acrylics.

Have you tried this? I have not had good luck using paint on hands and feet.

gooboo - Your oil-pastel experiment worked great. And thank you for reporting on the use of Gamsol to remove oil pastel if needed.

ThePhotogsBlog -- Yes, acrylics work on the plastics. Scroll through this thread and look at all the instances where I tried to match the oil pastel on the body with the acrylics on the hard plastic hands and feet. It is a bit of a challenge, and one has only so much patience or skill. Of course, you could scratch them or scrape them off (though not quite as easily as you would be able to rub off the oil pastel with a q-tip) the plastic surface, so you probably would want to coat them. I just got myself some Dullcote for my newest try.

Nice work, gooboo!

And yes, I have painted tbleague hands with acrylics, and have also used powdered soft pastels with a varnish to seal them. For me the key was a) to first prime them in some way, b) to thin either the paint or varnish with airbrush thinner (even when applying manually) —this stuff makes the paint super thin as well as dry very fast, and c) using a small piece of cut up make-up sponge to quickly dab it on in several thin layers. I also have something like a toothpick or needle near by to pop any bubbles that might form between fingers before they dry.

Update on painting silicone seamless bodies (Phicen/TBLeague) with Paint Markers

We already have viable options for painting a silicone body (or sizable parts of it) -- my preference being to use oil pastel. But when it comes to smaller and finer designs on the body, that seems almost impossible to use -- you are unlikely to get the pastel sharp enough, and if you do it will break off immediately, and even if you got past that hurdle, you would end up smudging your design when you try to rub it into the surface. That is why, for painting hair and tattoos, I turned to alternatives. The Uni Pin Fine Line fineliner drawing pen works very well but only when applied directly to the silicone surface (one that is not colored with oil pastel already) -- see Post 192 above. Oil-based ink Pilot drawing pens worked quite well onto the oil-pastel-colored silicone surface, but required multiple and vigorous massages with clean dry paper towels to get the ink to stop transferring -- see Post 205 above. So I was still looking for a better option, as I embarked upon a second custom seamless Darth Maul project.

I experimented with a variety of Paint Markers, both oil-based and acrylic, but they had a tendency to smudge or rub off or crack and flake off -- see Post 1 above for acrylic. I finally turned to industrial markers, harder to find and often more costly. Repeated testing demonstrated that the Markal Pro-Line XT paint marker (now Xylene free) was the best solution. It does have some drawbacks -- Xylene free or not, you should use it in a well-ventilated area; it dries fairly shiny -- although that is largely offset by the eventual application of protective powder; when you stretch a painted area, the paint from the marker can crack like acrylic does, but generally not as much and it does not flake off or rub off (it did in just a couple of perhaps lightly painted spots, for example where the top of the harder plastic foot kept rubbing onto the bottom of the silicone lower leg -- it is very easy to fix with another spot application); worst of all, the marker's tip is quite wide (and there are no other sizes available in that line), so I had to flood tiny pools of marker paint and dip a toothpick into them to painstakingly paint smaller details. You can see the result below.



Some words of caution: beyond using this in a well-ventillated space, I would say reserve it for smaller areas and details, not for a whole base color (because of the potential for cracking); also, when applying it to the silicone body, make sure the areas you are covering are in a non-stretched position at the time of application -- stupidly thinking that it would preempt cracking, I tried applying the marker to a stretched area of a test subject body, and it caused a bunch of little holes to appear (presumably melting the thinnest silicone areas and releasing air bubbles?) on the surface.

For Maul 2.0 (pictured above with the marker), I used oil pastels for the base color of the body (there is such a thing as going too far/rough with the make-up sponge, so don't get carried away), Markal Pro-Line XT paint marker (or its ink) for the body markings, underlayers of red and black Markal Pro-Line XT paint marker and overlayers of Vallejo acrylics mixed with Liquitex ultra matte medium (thanks for the suggestion) for the harder plastic hands and feet. More photos HERE (Post 39).

I hope this is useful.

That looks pretty good, Guv. How did you manage to get the ink out of the marker to use with a toothpick?

Stryker2011 wrote:That looks pretty good, Guv. How did you manage to get the ink out of the marker to use with a toothpick?

Thank you very much, glad you like it. Like acrylic paint markers and some others, before you can use the Markal Pro-Line XT paint marker, you need to shake it up, open it, then press the tip against some surface, pumping it up and down a few times until you see the paint imbuing it and making a mark. Then you're good to go, and need to repeat this once in a while when you find your marker running dry. But if you overdo the pumping, you end up with so much paint coming out, that it makes a little pool of ink on the surface (strangely, it dries faster on a plastic baggie than on paper). Anyway, that is how I got the ink out to use with the toothpicks.

Absolutely fantastic work and results here ! My Compliments ! Sorry, I don't see all the great stuff in all the other threads, because I only watch the "General Talk". I will look here now often. Please show more.

Edit : Where's Aayla Secura? Is she finished and I just missed the thread like so much other fantastic threads I missed here ?