I worked on Frank last night. For those of you curious about my creative process, I’m afraid it’s much more haphazard and much less visionary than you would hope. Motivated by a combination of extreme impatience and only slightly-above-average artistic talent, I cannot precisely replicate the exciting ideas teeming in my brain. Therefore I strive to reproduce the spirit of a likeness, the essence of the character because all its particular details cannot fully translate between my synapses and my hands.

In practice, this means I was drawing last night directly on the resin without having treated it first. The scribbling above represents Prismacolor Dark Brown Fonce [PC947] for eye-liner and eyebrows, Tuscan Red [PC 937] for the lip liner and some red chalk pastel to fill in the lips. You can’t see it, but I used a little red pastel on the insides of the eyes and a mixture of brown and black pastel in the creases of the mouth. Read the rest of the story below.

Not being that high-tech, I just applied the Prismacolor directly from the pencils, making sure that they were ultra-sharp. Pointy pencils allow me much more control than acrylic paints. I have an ambivalent relationship with acrylics. They never behave well enough for me, probably because I lay them on too thickly and then become exasperated when they slide. Prismacolors adhere much better to resin, with finer control over color application, greater blending and a smoother finish.

I applied the pastels by powdering some of them, then dipping a dry brush into the powder and brushing it on the resin. [Thank you to Armeleia for the tip about the DRY brush.] As you can see, the pastels don’t stick very deeply to uncoated resin, so I went over the pastels with Prismacolor Rouge Cramoisi [PC924] later. Here’s Frank currently catching the spirit of my likeness, if not the letter:

And here’s my second mock-up of what he will look like with eyes and hair. Naturally, there will be more make-up involved, but I just wanted to get a sense of the completed project. While it is uncompleted, I must say that I like the way it’s coming along. The artificially arched eyebrows and the luscious, smirking mouth give him an amused and welcoming expression that I find very endearing.