Acrylic Color BLUSHING FLESH

Flushed skin where the blood shows through

Blushing Flesh is a flesh tone shifted toward pink, that is the color of the places where the skin is thinnest and the blood shows through it. On a figure it is a surprisingly small area: the tips of the nose and the ears, the cheekbones, the knuckles, the knees, the lower lip. It is exactly these small things, though, that make the difference between a face that looks alive and a face that looks like a painted statue.

Most often the shade is applied heavily thinned, as a transparent film over finished skin. The procedure is simple: mix the paint with water to a milky consistency, wipe the excess off into paper and lay a light veil. By repeating it, the saturation rises in small steps, so you can stop exactly where the face still has a natural hint.

Where else the shade will serve

• fresh grazes and bruises on the skin of fighting characters
• the inside of the palm and the underside of the feet on barefoot figures
• the tongue, the gums and sensitive places on animals and equestrian models
• brightening darker flesh tones without a jump into yellow

The paint dries matte, so further coats follow on it without trouble, and like the whole line it can be sprayed after thinning with acrylic thinner. For a brush it needs no adjustment. The cap seals, the ball inside dissolves settled pigment and the dropper allows even a single drop to be taken out, which is most useful with a tone consumed in small amounts.

It pays to mix flesh tones on a palette with a lid and keep them to the end of a project. When you come back to a figure after a week, mixing exactly the same hint again is difficult and a correction tends to show more than the original mistake.