Customizing Funko Pop!s | How to Paint (Part 4)

PART 1: What You Need

PART 2: How to Prep Your Figure

PART 3: How to Sculpt & Sand

PART 4: How to Paint

As you’ll remember from What You Need, a Sta-Wet palette comes in very handy for mixing paints if you don’t intend to finish your project in one day, since it means you can work with your acrylic paints for much longer. After preparing the palette, I dripped a bit of Flow Aid into my water, then used it to dilute dark brown paint for Kamala’s hair.

Usually, I’d recommend stripping the paint from a figure and adding a coat of primer to ensure the color is even and adheres well. In this case, because I was using such dark colors over such a light base, I wasn’t too worried so I went directly in with paint.

Tips:

• Mix darker paints into lighter paints tiny bit by tiny bit, and use the butt of your brush if you want to avoid gunking up the bristles.
• If you’re painting a flesh color, have extra handy to cover up mistakes.
• Make sure your paint is a little diluted/runny with water and use several thin coats instead of one thick coat. Acrylic paint dries pretty quickly, so you don’t have to wait long between layers.
• When your paint is matte and dry to the touch, then you can paint the next layer. Painting a layer too soon will create texture.
• Use smaller brushes for tighter areas.
• Paint with the side of your brush instead of the point to get long, smooth strokes.
• Rinse your brushes in the jar of water every couple of minutes to avoid getting the bristles stuck together with paint.
• Put your paint in the middle of the area you want to paint and spread it out in all directions as much as possible to prevent accumulating too much paint in one section.
• Tip your brush in to ensure that crevices are also coated in paint, but be careful not to make the paint too thick or you’ll lose detail.

Here, I sketched out a guide for Kamala’s mask shape in pencil, then painted over it in blue.

In the final installment, I’ll show you how to seal your figure so that it lasts the test of time. Stay tuned!