Finishing the Other Side

I was jumping around while things were drying on one end, to the other end. Here, my contribution was the hand with the mustache growing from it.

Step 2: reference, hands

The white has been set down for the color of the hands. that means that I had to paint the shape of where the hands are going, white. the white is used to refer back to canvas so we can build solid colors, on top.

Step 3: darks on hands

Your darks should be looked at as abstract shapes. In order to get things in the right place you have to look at the shading not only as shading on an object but, as an object all in itself. I'm trying to get the main areas where those darks are.

Step 6: Color and shading

On this hand, after the darkest parts have been painted, I went back and created gradients with lighter colors. There's a lot of "back and forth" in the painting process (with acrylics).

Step 10: finished hands

After the flame on the candle has been done, we can call the hands done (for now). I'll add that the way to achieve a glow for the flame is use of a gradient using only white paint.

Step 14: finishing touches

It's the drips under the circular frame that wrapped this up for me (for the time being).

Step 9: The Hands, part 1

The hands are done in white, first. Here, we get the proportion and the basic shape.

Step 10: The Hands, part 2

This is where we overlap the white with a base skin color. Since the white is down, we can paint this layer as if it's on fresh canvas. Starting with a base color and letting it dry before applying the shading and highlighting works best for me. That base color will be used again to create gradients.

Step 11: The Hands, part 3

Here, the shading and the highlighting was applied to the hands. The light casing down from above was perfect from the picture I took. Most often times, it ends up being easier to go out and shoot the reference, yourself, rather than hunting online from stock photography or whatever.