Totally not the norm here art wise but anyone have Skin Illustrator/silicone advise?

Christina Whiting

Hi there my name's Christina and I'm a doll artist.  I sculpt, mold, cast, paint, and punch hair.  Up until now I've been hand painting each doll using psycho paint and silc pig/SAM paints.  I dont like the hue the silicone pigments give off so I decided to join the school and watch the tutorials on prosthetic painting.  Knowledge is always a good thing.  I liked the idea of the skin iillustrator liquid paints so I used them with silpoxy and naptha.  It is finicky curing.  It takes a lot longer to cure than dragon skin.  

 Since I'm making dolls they get handled a lot and I am constantly looking for the best ways to make sure I have the best adhesion possible which includes rigorous cleaning, etc.  I find that the skin illustrators since they are alcohol based are finicky. I've had an occasion where the silpoxy and skin iillustrator didnt fully cure.  Has anyone else tried mixing skin illustrators with Silpoxy by any chance? Any words of wisdom? Attached a pic for fun.  Thanks for your help!

Chris Ellerby

Skin illustrator would be more temporary on an application like this, since it would eventually wear off the surface unless encapsulated by a thin layer of silicone.  You could airbrush on thin layers of skin illustrator then airbrush on some silicone to encapsulate it though.

Otherwise when it comes to painting silicone the best bet is to use silicone paints (the ones you mentioned) or to make your own using oil paints and silicone.

Here are a couple of our lessons that may help:

Painting Silicone Skin - Realistic Flesh Tones
https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/tutorials/silicone-painting-realistic-flesh-tones-vol-1

How To Paint Realistic Silicone Skin - Silicone Painting Techniques
https://www.stanwinstonschool.com/tutorials/hyper-realistic-silicone-painting-techniques

Hope that helps!

/Chris

Micah J.

I have had some success using Skin Illustrators with a slurry of Loctite SI 5145 and 99% alcohol. The silicone adhesive must be compatible with alcohol so, only alkoxy type silicone adhesives will work although I have only used the Loctite and a Dow Corning 3145, both a little expensive. You should look for "mil-spec/non corrosive". These are usually the alkoxy silicones.

Alcohol can inhibit the cure of acetoxy silicone adhesives, this may be why you are having paint curing issues. For acetoxy adhesives like Silpoxy, silicone solvents like NOVOCS, Dow Corning OS-10 or, I think Wacker is AK.065 or something, work the best. 

Skin Illustrators, in my experience, are not strong enough solvents to dilute the alkoxy silicone so a slurry of 99% and alkoxy silicone must be made and then this can be colored with the liquid Skin Illustrators or any other alcohol based paint. These are moisture cure adhesives so cold and dry will extend the curing time. If the humidity is too low, it can even fail to cure at all. High humidity and warm are what you need. Even then though, these silicones take longer than the acetoxy types to cure, quite a bit longer, really.

The upside is you can use the alcohol based paints. The downside is the longer and trickier cure. 

Christina Whiting

Thank you very much for your help Chris and Micah.  I think you are right and the problem is with the type of silicone used with the skin iillustrator.  I switched to them because the silc pig and Sam silicone pigments are really lacking in color.  The red leaves this hue that drives me crazy.  I was also starting to think the problem was with the GE1 silicone base I was using.  

I am applying the skin illustrator into a GE1 slurry and thinning with either novocs or naptha.  I will probably finish this project with psycho paint base just to be safe now that I have stripped all the GE/skin illustrator cured silicone.  I am going to look into the Dow Corning as well.

Thank you so much both of you for your help.

Christina