Painting seamless bodies (NSFW?)

Has anyone tried to use Ephiane's pastel technique to make bodies look dirty?  I eventually want to do a post apocalyptic faction that lives in the wastelands and is physically dirtier than my PinUp Patrol girls, whom they might otherwise somewhat resemble.  

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/677228862697529590/?nic=1

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/327144360431949674/?nic=1


https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/809099889289138927/?nic=1

One thing I found out accidentally is that allowing TBleague bodies come into contact with newspaper pages will definitely stain them; the ink in the paper must have some peculiar chemical reaction with the silicone bodies.  I found that if this happens, it takes quite a lot of washing and rubbing to get the stains out.  Has anyone else had this experience?

ThePhotogsBlog wrote:Has anyone tried to use Ephiane's pastel technique to make bodies look dirty?  I eventually want to do a post apocalyptic faction that lives in the wastelands and is physically dirtier than my PinUp Patrol girls, whom they might otherwise somewhat resemble.  

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/677228862697529590/?nic=1

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/327144360431949674/?nic=1


https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/809099889289138927/?nic=1

One thing I found out accidentally is that allowing TBleague bodies come into contact with newspaper pages will definitely stain them; the ink in the paper must have some peculiar chemical reaction with the silicone bodies.  I found that if this happens, it takes quite a lot of washing and rubbing to get the stains out.  Has anyone else had this experience?

I haven't tried painting a tbleague yet, bit I got stains from the rough side of black leather. Looked a bit like machine oil, if that helps. The stains magically disappeared some day.

...


For a crazy future project, I want to paint a body for a character that's supposed to be suntan (spends most of the time outside) and then will mostly be covered in multiple colours. I don't know yet if I should choose a suntan or pale one, as I think the colors might be brighter on the pale one, while the suntan one is more fitting to the character.
Does anyone know if it makes much difference?

Ovy wrote:
For a crazy future project, I want to paint a body for a character that's supposed to be suntan (spends most of the time outside) and then will mostly be covered in multiple colours. I don't know yet if I should choose a suntan or pale one, as I think the colors might be brighter on the pale one, while the suntan one is more fitting to the character.
Does anyone know if it makes much difference?

The colours will likely be a bit 'brighter' on a pale body, but the suntan is itself quite pale, just a slightly different tone, so the colours still do show up no problem. 

I'm not sure if I quite understand the effect you would be going for with that, but be aware that layering colours might be a bit tricky.... I would definitely experiment first, if you can. I say this because some colours may not show up very well over another colour, and in some cases too many colours on top of each other can cause problems, especially if some of the colours have lighter pigment or white in them [white oil pastels seem to not adhere to the silicone almost at all, and may even 'erase' the colours underneath]. If you have a tbleague figure that has an area of its body that will be covered up, experiment on that part of the 'skin'. I did that with mine because it was the only way to make sure I could get the colours 'right' prior to colouring the entire body.

Thanks for the input! I guess I would start with yellows and later add purples, reds, blues and greens etc. while trying to avoid overpainting and whites..I want to try some kind of full body painting.
When using the body as some kind of abstract canvas, it would be an oil pastel on tbleague experiment itself, so errors could be turned into design.

I might highlight curves and forms, but try to avoid recognizable images, more of an impressionistic and abstract approach.

Like that marble design, but less detailed.


I imagine adding simple colorful/paint splattered baggy pants, and a rainbow colored wing contraption on the back.



I want to paint the heads too and add/color the hair.

That will be interesting. Good luck.

Oh, very cool! I guess you could probably achieve a multi-coloured effect, but you'd just have to be careful about using white , as honestly I have had zero luck with it and it does not stick to the bodies. Also, you'd only be able to get the colours as 'thin' as the actual thinnest edge of the oil pastel. 

Curious to see the eventual results.  

I will try to update regarding my own body-colouring projects soon, but RL has been kicking me in the arse the last few months and I've been too stressed to do much of anything, so bear with me.

Thanks a lot, although it will take some time before I will start that new project.

But I experimented on the ankles of a pale and a suntan body, using yellow, purple and pink.
The pictures I took don't show much difference, it will look better in daylight. But as you said, the color is significantly brighter and vibrant on the pale body, which I like much more, so I will use one of those, for a female version at least.

And no rush young Skywalker, we all bear with you.

Oh, I'm glad your experiment is working so far! And yes, definitely the pale for the brighter colours.  

And thanks for your patience.

skywalkersaga wrote:Oh, I'm glad your experiment is working so far! And yes, definitely the pale for the brighter colours.  

And thanks for your patience.

The pale bodies make the brighter colors really pop out. Some WIP pics. I painted the body in one session because it was so sticky after washing. I watched a nice Surrealism and Jean Michel Basquiat documentary while doing that. Talcum powder magically removed all those little pastel and dust particles and I have the feeling it blended the colors a little. I didn't plan and think too much and didn't want to go into super detail, because then I would never have come to an end.
I wonder what material would be good for tattoo stencils? Sticky foil?

Wow, she looks awesome, Ovy! I'm super impressed, though not surprised, by your excellent and artistic results. :') 

It does give me a little hope for possibly using the seamless bodies for tattooed figures, after all. For the figure I'm specifically trying to do, the tattoos are really more like body paint anyway, and the lines are quite thick, so using the pastel is theoretically possible. But getting those sharper lines/edges on the design is indeed something I haven't figured out yet. A stencil is a brilliant idea, though maybe I'm just lacking imagination, but I'm struggling to picture how it would work...

Thanks a lot! I don't know about the stencils yet, but Gubernator used round hole stencils for certain unpainted areas, pressing them onto the body and then painting over with the pastels. Might work for more detailed tattoos too.

If I may guess, is your project that tribal blue worm painted Anakin from the old clones wars?

Ovy wrote:Thanks a lot! I don't know about the stencils yet, but Gubernator used round hole stencils for certain unpainted areas, pressing them onto the body and then painting over with the pastels. Might work for more detailed tattoos too.

If I may guess, is your project that tribal blue worm painted Anakin from the old clones wars?

LOL, yep, I'm not exactly subtle. ;D

It's a project that is still just a distant dream, since I still haven't even figured out if modding the tbleague body to have the mech arm would actually be feasible or not. But I need to know if it's possible, so I know if I can keep dreaming....

ETA: In case anyone doesn't know wtf we're talking about, it's the Tartakovsky 2D-animated Anakin from the Nelvaan quest storyline: 









I'm only a little obsessed..... 

Hm I am pretty sure it can be done - the animated style also leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The metal skeleton is a good base for a mechanical arm,  the skin around it could be cut off. But I guess you considered all that already. Do you know what kind of body you might use? I guess M32 (Bruce Lee) or M33. Maybe M32 as it looks  tall, slender and super strong. I have a m32 waiting to be fully body painted so the lady above has not to be alone. As I go full freestyle on them anyway, I might try out how some of Anakins rectangular, pointy blue tattoos might look like on a tanned seamless body. I will let you know, I might get it done this week.

Ovy wrote:Hm I am pretty sure it can be done - the animated style also leaves a lot of room for interpretation. The metal skeleton is a good base for a mechanical arm,  the skin around it could be cut off. But I guess you considered all that already. Do you know what kind of body you might use? I guess M32 (Bruce Lee) or M33. Maybe M32 as it looks  tall, slender and super strong. I have a m32 waiting to be fully body painted so the lady above has not to be alone. As I go full freestyle on them anyway, I might try out how some of Anakins rectangular, pointy blue tattoos might look like on a tanned seamless body. I will let you know, I might get it done this week.

It's kind of you to experiment a bit on my behalf! There was a thread a while ago where Rev described how one might mod the arm, and it sounded like with the right tools it could definitely work. And likewise, you may be right that the tattoos are possible, presuming the oil pastel can indeed be controlled well enough. My idea was to use an M33, but with ankle extenders to make up the height. 

There have been several factors preventing me from going ahead with this project, including too many other WIP projects going on already, as well as lack of spare funds, and thus my hesitation to experiment too much since I can't really afford to 'waste' any tbleague bodies. Also, I don't have any kind of tool to cut the metal on the tbleague skeleton. So it's all been a bit 'pie in the sky' anyway for now. I had even given up on the seamless bodies for tattoos and had been considering using an old plastic muscle body just so I could paint it more easily, but then struggled to find any plastic body that I liked enough to use. :p

Btw, curious to see more of your painted people! The one you showed above is just so beautifully done and aesthetically pleasing. I do love body art that enhances or emphasizes the natural body shape. 

Very impressive body painting, Ovy!

GubernatorFan wrote:Very impressive body painting, Ovy!

Thanks, also thanks to all of you pioneers and honor to all the bodies that were sacrificed in the name of science.

skywalkersaga wrote:[...]


It's kind of you to experiment a bit on my behalf! There was a thread a while ago where Rev described how one might mod the arm, and it sounded like with the right tools it could definitely work. And likewise, you may be right that the tattoos are possible, presuming the oil pastel can indeed be controlled well enough. My idea was to use an M33, but with ankle extenders to make up the height. 

There have been several factors preventing me from going ahead with this project, including too many other WIP projects going on already, as well as lack of spare funds, and thus my hesitation to experiment too much since I can't really afford to 'waste' any tbleague bodies. Also, I don't have any kind of tool to cut the metal on the tbleague skeleton. So it's all been a bit 'pie in the sky' anyway for now. I had even given up on the seamless bodies for tattoos and had been considering using an old plastic muscle body just so I could paint it more easily, but then struggled to find any plastic body that I liked enough to use. :p

Btw, curious to see more of your painted people! The one you showed above is just so beautifully done and aesthetically pleasing. I do love body art that enhances or emphasizes the natural body shape. 

Ah I think I remember the cybernetic experiments. I thought the metal arm could be incorporated into the arm. And yeah this hobby and it's many problematic sides. Sometimes I think it's 80% problem solving. But enough of that, I hope the Anakinxperiments can cheer you up/motivate you.

I didn't paint him with the mindset of accurately recreating the tattoos. The square...spiral (squiral?) Became much more dense and labyrinthine like and will be easier if you stick to the original design.
The best result to get the pointy ends is to use swift strokes, so it might make sense to cover up a part with a piece of paper, start to draw here up to the skin, so only the pointy end ends up on the skin. (Didn't try that) I am not sure if I understand what I just wrote...well. Also use multiple light strokes per line.



No lamb hair.


And thanks sky, 'painted people' is a good codename.  
The rest is WIP, but I am blurring the lines between tutorial and something else here. Might open another thread, with story and all.

Your painted people look psychedelic, Ovy! Maybe they can be a tribe of rave-goers who somehow were so zoinked that they were not impacted by the cataclysm.

This tutorial thread is very cool. Some nice ideas you have and thanks for all the testing.

I like the possibilities these Oil pastels offer. Might try one day for myself.

Ah, wow, Ovy! That line painting experiment turned out so well! I will bear in mind those tips if I end up attempting this. Thank you so much for sharing, it really did cheer me up. :') 

I love how you incorporated it into the full body paint... like GF said, it's very psychedelic. And is there something about the Painted People and making kissy faces? If I had to guess...maybe some vestige of 'selfies'... lol!

Has anyone experienced issues with oil pastels and colour transfer? I recently had this problem with a tbleague body I coloured, but I'm not sure if it might just be due to the fact that I maybe didn't wash the residue thoroughly enough? I have been struggling with this one in particular because the colour doesn't seem to evenly stain the body, so I keep washing it, then going over it again, washing it, going over it again, etc, to try to cover up the areas where the flesh colour keeps showing through underneath. So there is a chance that maybe I haven't washed it enough since I'm trying to keep the colour even and heavy cleaning with soap tends to make it look patchy. 

The other oddity is that I only seem to notice the colour transfer after the body is dry and I coat it in the translucent makeup powder again. I'm wondering if the powder somehow absorbs some of the colour, and the seeming 'transfer' is actually from the powder itself picking up the colour and then transferring it onto the clothing? 

Sorry if this sounds strange, but just thought I'd check if the powder issue had happened to anyone else? 

Otherwise, it's likely just me.... I probably need to just wash it more thoroughly, even thought I'd thought I'd done so already...

skywalkersaga wrote:Has anyone experienced issues with oil pastels and colour transfer? I recently had this problem with a tbleague body I coloured, but I'm not sure if it might just be due to the fact that I maybe didn't wash the residue thoroughly enough? I have been struggling with this one in particular because the colour doesn't seem to evenly stain the body, so I keep washing it, then going over it again, washing it, going over it again, etc, to try to cover up the areas where the flesh colour keeps showing through underneath. So there is a chance that maybe I haven't washed it enough since I'm trying to keep the colour even and heavy cleaning with soap tends to make it look patchy. 

The other oddity is that I only seem to notice the colour transfer after the body is dry and I coat it in the translucent makeup powder again. I'm wondering if the powder somehow absorbs some of the colour, and the seeming 'transfer' is actually from the powder itself picking up the colour and then transferring it onto the clothing? 

Sorry if this sounds strange, but just thought I'd check if the powder issue had happened to anyone else? 

Otherwise, it's likely just me.... I probably need to just wash it more thoroughly, even thought I'd thought I'd done so already...

Not sure I can evaluate the problem, given all the potential unknowns. Maybe ask yourself the following and see if there is something you might have missed somewhere, although I'm sure you already know all this...
Are you applying the oil pastel to a TBLeague silicone body surface?
Are you washing off any protective powder before applying the oil pastel?
Are you using non-water-soluble oil pastel? (they make some of those too, avoid them for such purposes)
Are you rubbing in the oil pastel enough into the silicone surface before rinsing, drying, and coating with powder?
With enough of the above treatment, it ought to stick and not transfer.

GubernatorFan wrote:

skywalkersaga wrote:Has anyone experienced issues with oil pastels and colour transfer? I recently had this problem with a tbleague body I coloured, but I'm not sure if it might just be due to the fact that I maybe didn't wash the residue thoroughly enough? I have been struggling with this one in particular because the colour doesn't seem to evenly stain the body, so I keep washing it, then going over it again, washing it, going over it again, etc, to try to cover up the areas where the flesh colour keeps showing through underneath. So there is a chance that maybe I haven't washed it enough since I'm trying to keep the colour even and heavy cleaning with soap tends to make it look patchy. 

The other oddity is that I only seem to notice the colour transfer after the body is dry and I coat it in the translucent makeup powder again. I'm wondering if the powder somehow absorbs some of the colour, and the seeming 'transfer' is actually from the powder itself picking up the colour and then transferring it onto the clothing? 

Sorry if this sounds strange, but just thought I'd check if the powder issue had happened to anyone else? 

Otherwise, it's likely just me.... I probably need to just wash it more thoroughly, even thought I'd thought I'd done so already...

Not sure I can evaluate the problem, given all the potential unknowns. Maybe ask yourself the following and see if there is something you might have missed somewhere, although I'm sure you already know all this...
Are you applying the oil pastel to a TBLeague silicone body surface?
Are you washing off any protective powder before applying the oil pastel?
Are you using non-water-soluble oil pastel? (they make some of those too, avoid them for such purposes)
Are you rubbing in the oil pastel enough into the silicone surface before rinsing, drying, and coating with powder?
With enough of the above treatment, it ought to stick and not transfer.

Thanks, GF. I think that's probably the only possible step of the process that I could be doing 'wrong', other than perhaps not rinsing it well enough at the end -- I'm currently trying to colour one of the smaller tbleague bodies, and certain areas, especially around the joints, are very delicate, and I've been a bit afraid to apply too much pressure lest I somehow break the underlying metal skeleton or puncture the 'flesh'. So I'm thinking in some spots I might not have rubbed it in strongly enough with the sponge. I'll try again and hope for the best.

skywalkersaga wrote:Thanks, GF. I think that's probably the only possible step of the process that I could be doing 'wrong', other than perhaps not rinsing it well enough at the end -- I'm currently trying to colour one of the smaller tbleague bodies, and certain areas, especially around the joints, are very delicate, and I've been a bit afraid to apply too much pressure lest I somehow break the underlying metal skeleton or puncture the 'flesh'. So I'm thinking in some spots I might not have rubbed it in strongly enough with the sponge. I'll try again and hope for the best.

I don't think it is really a question of strength. Just to thoroughly get some of the oil pastel to get stuck/bond there, while the excess gets loose and gets stuck somewhere else or removed. I remember it took me a long time to get it to the point where it would not only cover an area, but also will not transfer. So spend some time rubbing it on, then rinse, if necessary more than once. I would pat dry with a paper towel in between, and before the final application of protective powder.

Gotcha, will make sure I do that!

Regarding the colour transfer issue, fingers crossed I seem to have sorted it -- I think it was simply down to not washing one of the areas enough... I had overlooked certain spots. Hopefully it will be ok now. 

And going back to the subject of colouring Jiaou doll bodies, I was recently reading a thread over on the old site, and someone mentioned the fact that washing Jiaou bodies in soap can dry them out and cause peeling and cracking. I'm now wondering if that might be a part of the problem I encountered with my earlier attempts to colour one. Is it even possible to adequately 'wash' the oil pastel off a body without soap?

Update: the method described here is in fact reversible, see Post 174 below. For a better alternative, see Post 192 below.

Seems like several of us are experimenting with applying color -- for various purposes and by various means -- to seamless bodies. I've come up with a little breakthrough, and wrote it up and illustrated it below. Ever since I got the ADD Toys War Wolves "muscle version," I couldn't fail but be impressed with what they did paint-wise, and how it leapt ahead of TBLeague and Jiaou in that respect (less so when it comes to sculpting -- nipples should be 3D! -- especially articulation -- nothing seems to beat a real stainless steel skeleton so far). Now why can't one company get everything right?

Anyway, I sought a way to draw body hair on a TBLeague silicone-covered steel-skeletoned (is that a word?) body. Short of some factory setup with breathers and masks and silicone spray pigments and other futuristic technology (I don't actually know how ADD Toys pulled it off), that was not going to happen. Oil pastel seems to be the easiest approach to coloring the silicone covering of TBLeague bodies (though see now Gooboo's excellent write up of the dyeing alternative), but there is no way oil pastel could produce lines that are sufficiently thin, and the methods used in conventional paintings to produce such lines (by scraping off the excess material) would hardly be applicable here.

So I looked for an oil-based ink pen with a tip small enough to do the job. The best I could find was a Pilot Drawing Pen with Oil-Based Ink, tip size 005 (Pilot M-20DRN05-B, 200, is the name/number that appears above the bar code on the pen; the rest is in Japanese). These come in very limited color (black, maybe also blue and red -- at least the other sizes do), so I went for black.

For the experiment, I took one of my M30 bodies (TBLeague's first go at a seamless male body, turned out too pale/greyish and short, some say too cartoonish), gave it a gentle wash to remove the protective powder, colored the nipples with oil pastels to get that part out of the way, and proceeded with hand drawing the little hairs. On a hard smooth surface the line is very fine, though not quite as fine as the painted hairs on the ADD Toys muscle body; on the silicone cover the line is less fine and harder to draw, but still better than any of the alternatives I could think of. Hand drawing body hair can get tedious real fast, but I am stubborn for a reason; still, more patience and care might have produced a somewhat better result. But ultimately, this is for experimental purposes.

As expected, the oil-based ink was able to bond with the silicone surface once that had been cleared of protective powder. It did not come off when gently washed off and patted dry. It dulled just a little bit when I re-applied protective powder over it (and that is actually a good thing, otherwise it was a bit shiny and sharp; besides, the silicone surface should be protected). It did not transfer on paper towels or clothing. A drop of water left on top of it had no effect; but rubbing the water in a bit led to a little bit of smudging (though not washing off or color transfer). Update: for more on this, see Post 174 below.

Regardless of my success or failure in drawing the body hair (I may have gotten carried away) in a remotely realistic manner or the suitability of this tip for that purpose (I don't think we can find a finer one), the permanent coloring goal seems to be successfully attained. A number of you have expressed concern about finding a way to draw tattoos on these bodies, and this might work even better for those than it does for body hair (you might want to get both this finest tip and one of the slightly less fine ones to cover more ground).













What do you think?

Update: the method described here is in fact reversible, see Post 174 below.

Interesting technique. I think you’re right about going a little overboard Now you need a Robin Williams sculpt — that guy was practically a primate. A little less and I think it would look really good — it’s too bad the pen doesn’t come in brown, as that might make it a bit less stark. Really good first attempt.

Stryker2011 wrote:Interesting technique. I think you’re right about going a little overboard Now you need a Robin Williams sculpt — that guy was practically a primate. A little less and I think it would look really good — it’s too bad the pen doesn’t come in brown, as that might make it a bit less stark. Really good first attempt.

Fair enough, and thanks. The reason I kept going was, in part, because of how stark it was (even though I knew the protective powder would soften it a little bit) -- having significantly less coverage of body hair that was otherwise this stark would have made it look too "manscaped," and that was not an effect I wanted to end up with. While I own/wear a hairy body myself, I have little or no experience recreating the look, so I did some online research (which exposed me to some pretty questionable content on occasion); in some cases it is funny what passes for hairy these days, but there were plenty of photos with people much hairier than this. Robin Williams would have needed brown or brick red ink and a different body type, but you have a point. For your purposes, I think the potential for tattoos is pretty great.

Haha, he reminds me of some hairy Persian blokes I used to know.  

But seriously, this is a really cool discovery! I actually had thought about the potential of oil based pens myself a while ago, but then couldn't track any down and promptly forgot about it. I'm glad you managed to find some. Does it really only come in black? If so, frustrating.  Even so, it's still a really promising find for tattoo purposes, as you say!