Speckling to add shading and texture

Took my family down the coast for the weekend and my daughter wanted a leopard face for visiting the zoo. Did the standard
1. sponge white eyes and mouth,
2. sponge yellow on rest,
3. sponge orange over top of yellow around the edges and where we want contrast.
But then I thought the orange was a bit too orange and tried to do a light brown blend over orange. Found out by accident that if you have a lightly load course sponge and you only very light dab it, it leaves lots of small dots about the size of the holes in the sponge. Kind of like a speckled egg. So I decided to go with this and speckle the brown over the area I wanted a bit of texture and shadow.
It produced a very subtle effect, the brown is not really noticed (unless you are looking), but I think it improved the texture of the design, made it a bit less 2d cartoonish. It was also very quick to do.
Still need more work on this face, I don’t like my black dots.

Sorry if this comes off a bit noobish, but want to share that bit about the speckling and talking about stuff is useful. You guys give great advise.



A monster mask is a common face the young kids ask for. I saw LoneWolf has an eyebrow only version of it on his website that I liked, so I decided to give it a try as well.

Looking good. I love the speckled look. I frequently use gold, especially if i'm doing snakes or lizards. It shines over the green and looks similar to scales.

Stippling happens to be one of the main techniques taught by both the Wolfe brothers and the Wolfe team...

I use it all the time because blending isn't always my thing. Here are some pics with layering of colors, done with stippling.





You're off to a good start Chris. Keep it up

Or use a stipple sponge - comes in different grades, coarser or finer, etc.
I use it a lot for scaley/ rough effects.

Cat x