Edo Kalkman

<p>In this tutorial I’ll explain my method to painting freehands. I kept this tutorial a bit simpler by using a very limited palette and just regular brushwork.</p>

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Free hand skull

First of if you’re not used to making up your own design, get some reference pictures as a guideline or try to copy one. Even if i do my own designs I always make a collage of reference photos. Paints I used are a bone color, white and black.


Citadel Ushabti Bone

Citadel White Scar

Citadel Abaddon Black

In this case start with a black background And using a bone colored paint scetch in the general shape. You can see how thin the paint is here.


After this paint in the light and all the features and volumes of the skull. Doesn’t have to be precise. Al this is done with a stippling technique as this yields a nice bone structure.


Up next it’s stipling in the shadows and sharpen the details a bit in black and use white to build up the lights some more.


Now it’s time to smooth it out by glazing the freehand. This step I usually switch to airbrush but it’s regular for now. With the bonecolor and midtone mixes (black/bone & bone/white) smooth out al the transitions with glazing. By that I mean take your thinned down paint and draw most of the moisture out on a tissue. Using smooth strokes a small filter of paint is left behind . A large soft brush helps a lot. Result should be like this




The final steps! Reapply the highest lights with thinned white (stippling again). Define the teeth with black using normal thinned paint and adding some cracks and holes in black. Add some white highlights around the cracks to make them stand out a bit more.

That should be it . Most important thing is keeping your paints very thin for a smooth result.


Tutorial

Free hand skull

Tutorial steps archived

End of tutorial