Skeletons

With the skeletons I started to experiment with a technique called "washing".

Washing is an easy way to bring out recessed details. It works like this:

First lay down a base coat on each part of the figure. In this case, white for the bones, brown for the bows and leathery bits and different colors for the clothes. Then, choose a darker shade of each color (or one dark brown/black) and water it down until it is the consistency of low fat milk... very runny. Saturate your brush with the wash and dab it around carefully. Because the wash is so think, it tends to collect in the recessed areas, but be rather translucent on the raised areas. Thus, the recessed areas look darker, as if they are in shadow.

I didn't do any dry brushing on the skels... they are basically just a base coat, plus a wash of red. I used red because I wanted to create a bleeding effect, as if the skeletons are seeping.