Painting seamless bodies (NSFW?)

Well, I am glad my instincts about painting over a black body were correct! The colour is looking great!

And wow, I'd never encountered those marks before. Looks like the spot where there was a seam or something...?

This thread (forum) is such a treasure trove! Thank you so much for experimenting and sharing your results. This is very encouraging!

I still have my three bottles of Rit Dye sitting there unopened: brown, red and yellow. I need black before I start. Clearly.

Those marks all appear in the same spots on all my figures, so they must be related to the manufacturing of the figure somehow. Since nobody else using rit dye seems to have mentioned those issues, I've been wondering if the water temperature I've been using is too high. I don't have any un-dyed bodies to test that theory on at the moment, so that experiment will have to wait.

Interesting technique. Are you thinning the paint at all with water before rubbing it in, or just using it right out of the tube?

No, I'm not thinning the paint. That would just make it more transparent. Also, it's oil paint so you can't thin it with water anyways.

gooboo wrote:No, I'm not thinning the paint. That would just make it more transparent. Also, it's oil paint so you can't thin it with water anyways.

Oh, yeah. Right. Duh! I wasn’t thinking. (I hope you’re wearing rubber gloves when working with the paint, or are using some other means to rub it in.)

I'm glad you asked about the thinning, Stryker -- I was wondering about that myself. While I presumed he was not using something like turpentine on the tbleague bodies, I still wanted to double check as I like to know as many details about a process as possible before deciding if I will attempt it.

The only reason I would use solvent with this method would be to remove paint from the body. I would also be using Gamsol instead of turpentine, since turpentine is really nasty stuff.

gooboo wrote:The only reason I would use solvent with this method would be to remove paint from the body. I would also be using Gamsol instead of turpentine, since turpentine is really nasty stuff.

It certainly is -- one of the reasons I always hated painting with oils and switched to watercolour. Maybe I am old cause I never heard of Gamsol and it wasn't offered as an option when I learned how to paint with oils. :3

Well Gamsol is supposed to be odorless, but there is still an argument that even if it doesn't have a strong smell it can be bad for you if you inhale too much.

All oil paint solvents are toxic at some level, but Gamsol is one of the least bad as far as I know. A lot of the toxic chemicals that cause the bad smells have been removed, so it's not as bad as turpentine or other types of mineral spirits. According to the label it also evaporates more slowly than turpentine, so there's less stuff floating around in the air in a given work session. When I do use solvent I use it as little as possible and keep a lid on the container when not painting with it. It also doesn't damage the skin the way turpentine can.

I'm not trying to sound like an advertisement for Gamsol, I just use it professionally and stand by its results. When used properly it's quite harmless. I've seen people talk about using turpentine or other hardware store solvents for hobby activities, and I really wouldn't recommend doing that. Some of that stuff is made for stripping paint off of buildings or vehicles, and is way more powerful (and toxic) than what you need for what's basically an art project.

LOL, it's fine! I'm just trying to catch up as my knowledge of art supplies is obviously behind the times.

I decided to clean off this body I experimented with earlier. As you can see, the oil paint/pastel method should be totally reversible. Looks no different than the day I removed it from the box, as far as I can tell.

Well done. So what did you do to remove the paint? I know that in some instances, especially if the oil pastel is not too well-ingrained, repeated washing with soap and water would get it off.

Once again, I just used Gamsol. A thorough scrubbing with soap and water could definitely remove some of the paint, but if you wanted to completely start over with painting a figure I think you'd need to use solvent to get the paint off. I used a brush dipped in solvent and scrubbed off the paint under a running faucet, as well as soap and water in some spots.

That's great, good to know.

I keep forgetting to ask some questions about the oil painting method -- have any of the oil painted bodies dried enough now that you've added the protective powder back onto them? If so, how does the oil paint react to having the powder on top of it?

Also, have you been able to tell if the dried oil paint allows for movement on the joint areas without cracking?

Unfortunately, I just started some new freelance work in my job so I won't be able to do any more painting until the middle of March. I won't be able to say how well a second layer of paint stays on the figure for awhile.

Right now I can pick up and move the bodies around without getting any paint on my fingers, and there isn't any cracking. I'm not 100% positive about long term, but I don't think there should be any cracking since the oil pastel/paint rubbing method I think penetrates the "skin" of the figure a little, as opposed to acrylics where the paint just sits on top and consequently cracks when the figure is moved. But I'll keep testing it in the months ahead to see if anything changes long term.

Aw, no worries at all, appreciate the answers. I'll be patient and await further details, ;')

I got some spare time to mess around with the second layer of oil paint, and got mixed results. The first layer of paint was completely dry and as far as I could tell wasn't rubbing off on my figures or fabric whenever I touched or moved it, so that's a good sign.

However trying to rub on the second layer of paint inevitably removed some of the first layer, so I don't think you can really do a second layer of color with oils. This isn't necessarily a problem with all colors, as not every painting job would require more than one application of paint to get the color you want. I'm thinking that if you want to paint your figures a realistic, dark brown, you'll need to dye the base figure to darker color first with rit dye then paint on top of that. I plan to try that soon once I've finished my work and have some free time.

Thanks so much for the update. I wonder if could be an issue with TPE body in general --even when using the oil pastels, I always find that the first layer goes on smoothly, but if i try to blend another colour into it, it just seems to remove the other colour underneath.

I can't say that I've noticed applications of oil pastel to actively remove the previous layer (it may be a question of how well ensconced it is), but later layers definitely have less effect -- I think of it as the surface having a finite ability to receive the oil pastel particles.

I do think there's a limit to how much paint you can "rub" into the surface before you're just painting on top of paint.

Hello! I'm doing everything that was posted on the last 8 pages....Ha
Wish me luck!

"You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you’re selling it, you wanna sell it. Well…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should"

mvde27 wrote:Hello! I'm doing everything that was posted on the last 8 pages....Ha
Wish me luck!

"You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you’re selling it, you wanna sell it. Well…your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should"

Ha! Welcome... and good luck!

mvde27 wrote:Hello! I'm doing everything that was posted on the last 8 pages....Ha Wish me luck!

I second Sky: welcome and good luck. Don't do everything -- avoid the mistakes.

GubernatorFan wrote:

mvde27 wrote:Hello! I'm doing everything that was posted on the last 8 pages....Ha Wish me luck!

I second Sky: welcome and good luck. Don't do everything -- avoid the mistakes.

Duly noted! Cheers

Dr. Ian Malcolm, is that you? Welcome aboard, and good luck. I have all the materials to try this dying technique, I just haven’t done it yet.

So I was able to get 1 coat of Oil Pastel on the body.
- I first washed the Phicen body with soap and water and it did become tacky
- I then used soft makeup brushes to apply the Oil Pastel using Gamblin Artist's Oil color (same company as Gamsol)
- I will see what 24hrs looks like and update.

Look I am going for is a White, tight lycra SUPERHERO uniform.

Any comments/questions/tips are always welcome!

Ok so that was a total bust.
After 24hrs it was still wet and tacky and had not absorbed into silicone whatsoever.
Good news is Gamsol reversed what I did so I’ll try something else.