skywalkersaga wrote:And I'm wondering if you could use that black 'Egyptian' tbleague body as a base and paint over it? I'd been considering doing that myself, just with the pastels instead.
I have wondered this myself. I simply don't know whether the black surface would darken the over-layer of pastel too much, or whether the pastel would end up just being too opaque on top of it, or whether it would work just right. Of course, in itself, the true black of the body -- slightly mitigated by the protective powder -- seems pretty unrealistic for a human skintone. It might be usable if you want to base something on artistic convention -- in Egyptian art true black could be used either as conveying one of a range of sub-Saharan African skin tones or as a symbolic representation of posthumous eternal life; it was also largely the color of some types of granite or other materials used for statuary, and was not always painted over.