pre colouring gelatine

Bethany Lane

Hi  guys, I'm making a creature which requires cold blue toned skin. I was wondering how I could pigment this and whether a type of paint such as oil, may even work?

Thanks!

Chris Ellerby

Hi Bethany,

With gelatin you have a few pigmenting options.  One is to use colored flocking, which are short fiber strands that you can mix into the gelatin.  As this is not a pigment, it works best for subtile tinting and adding a bit of breakup/irregularity to the material.

You can tint the gelatin with food coloring, liquid makeup (foundation, etc), acrylic paint, powdered pigments, etc.

I've not tried using oil paints to pigment gelatin, but I imagine it would work. 

When testing any new pigment I would mix up a small sample batch and see how the color impacts the translucency, tear strength, rigidity, and life of the gelatin over time.  What works good on the first day may change in a couple days/weeks.

I know there are a few other folks here on the forums that have worked with pigmenting gelatin (I've only ever done flesh tones with liquid foundation and flocking), so maybe they can chime in!

/Chris

Bethany Lane

So many options! I've given the oil paint a go as I had it to hand, and it worked!
I'll probably move onto flocking as it'll be less of a solid colour.

Yes I've used foundation and flocking before and they are both very successful.

Thank you for your help!

Beth

Kevin Kovacs

I  have used painters pigment and i got much better results than foodcolor.
just read the label of the pigment or paint for toxicity and use a mask/respirator when using pigment powder. 
And take notes of the formulas you mix, small variations change the shade a lot.