Foam latex can be tinted during the batch mixing process to approximate the character’s skin tone as closely as possible, and then it can be detailed after the appliance has been washed, seamed, and patched. As you should recall, foam latex is opaque, so any sense of tissue depth will be the result of painting, not the result of intrinsic coloring.
The process for painting a foam latex appliance is essentially the same as for painting a silicone appliance (with the notable exception of needing to use silicone paint for a silicone appliance). One thing to be aware of is that foam latex is essentially a very soft sponge, so application of color should be sparing, applying just a little at a time and letting it dry to avoid saturating the foam with paint. In fact, this point alone is a good enough argument for not using an airbrush on foam latex but using the previously described spatter technique instead.
Here are the materials you will need:
Skin Illustrator®, Sta-Color, or Temptu Pro® palettes 1-inch chip brushes 99% IPA in a spray bottle Artists’ water-based liquid acrylic paint Latex makeup sponges Artists’ oil paint Plastic cups
1. 
With your appliance resting on a shaped form, open your color palettes and pick your colors.
2. Spray the color you will use first with alcohol and begin to liquefy the color with a cut-down chip brush. Skin Illustrator® and Sta-Color palettes have empty compartments for mixing colors. You do not want the color too saturated or concentrated or it will go onto the appliance too rich and vibrant and will look artificial. The color should be soft and natural; add color gradually to give the appearance of depth.
3. Repeat step 2 for the other colors as well. Human skin, or any skin for that matter, is not one solid, uniform color. There are reds and blues, browns, yellows, and greens in our coloration.
4. Interchange spatter techniques by using the cut-down brush and your fingers as well as tapping the longer bristle brush against the handle of another brush or even against your hand.
5. Try getting some color on your fingers and gently dabbing your fingers onto the appliance to create age spots, if appropriate.
I shouldn’t have to say this, but it’s very important to have a plan before you begin painting your appliance. You should have lots of reference photos as well as an already formed idea of what you want the finished piece to look like. As artists, part of our unwritten job description is that we have to see all the things that other people, ordinary people, don’t notice but that are there nonetheless— things like the way the skin at the tip of your knuckles where the digits begin is a bit pinker than the rest of the skin surrounding it, or that the color of the skin on the back of your hand is a good representation of the coloration of your face, or that the skin on the back of your arm is a different texture than the skin on the bottom of your arm. . . and so on.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until you get the effect you want, and then stop. Learn to know when to stop. That’s something you’ll have to learn to recognize on your own.
Once the appliance is applied, you can finish up with Skin Illustrator® colors or the Sta-Color ones, or you can stipple and brush other makeup, such as Ben Nye®.
Another industry standard for painting foam latex is with PAX paint, a 50/50 mixture of acrylic paint and Pros-Aide® adhesive. The Pros-Aide® helps keep the acrylic pliant and flexible once it dries; it won’t crack, which it would eventually do otherwise. PAX can be applied with a sponge-and-stipple technique, with an airbrush, or both. If you have the time to do it, airbrush is a wonderful tool, especially if you have at least two or more so that you can dedicate colors to each airbrush. If you have only one, it can become a real chore because of clogs and having to clean the brush for every color change. There are several brands available, and the choice is personal—whether you choose Iwata®, Paasche®, Thayer – Chandler®, or Badger®—but you should only consider a double-action airbrush, one that allows you to control both air and the amount of pigment. I have three Iwata and two Paasche® airbrushes and two Iwata® compressors. Two of the airbrushes I’ve been using since I was in college way back in the 20th century.
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Applying PAX with a makeup sponge or sponges is fine and pretty simple. Running PAX through an airbrush, though doable, is asking for trouble, in my humble opinion. Here’s what I suggest:
1. Apply your base foundation with PAX by hand.
2. Mix oil paint in the color or colors you want to apply next with the airbrush, and then add 99% alcohol. Stir it well, breaking up as much of the oil medium as you can.
3. Strain the alcohol/oil paint mixture through a piece of nylon hose (stocking) so that only colored alcohol filters through, leaving the oil medium in the nylon.
4. Run this through your airbrush in a stipple pattern; the alcohol evaporates almost instantaneously, leaving behind only the color. This is much easier to clean out of your airbrush than PAX. It is also a nice, translucent color to which you can add to achieve your skin coloration.
I don’t recommend putting alcohol or oil paint directly on the skin; it can cause irritation. Reserve this method for painting appliances only.
How do you stipple with an airbrush? Airbrushing for makeup requires very low pressure to begin with and an even lower pressure to get the airbrush to spit and spatter for the stipple effect. All you need to do is lower the air pressure of your compressor (3-4psi should be all the pressure needed) and remove the needle cap (if your airbrush has one; it ought to). Your airbrush should be set to stipple. Test it first on a piece of waxed palette paper for the pattern you want before trying it on your appliance. Now you’re in business.
This brings up a safety point. The very nature of an airbrush puts vapor into the environment where you’re working. Even though it’s not a lot of vapor and most of the pigments you will work with are nontoxic and not a health hazard, you are still breathing in foreign matter in very tiny particles. If you use an airbrush, please consider wearing a mask or respirator.
You can’t very well ask an actor to wear a mask if you are applying airbrush makeup to their face, however; for this reason it might be a better idea to use a chip brush and hand-spatter technique with alcohol-activated palette colors for this application. The actor can take a deep breath and close his eyes for a moment, you can apply the spatter, and then your subject can open his eyes and breathe.
GELATiN AND COLD FOAM
Both gelatin and cold foam (soft urethane foam) will require a sealer before painting. There are a number of acrylic sealers that can be used and will work just fine. Why do gelatin and urethane foam need to be sealed before coloring? For the same reason they need to be sealed before application.
1. If you apply adhesive to gelatin without a sealer, the adhesive won’t stick very well, and when gelatin gets wet it begins to lose its shape and becomes weak. If you try to paint unsealed gelatin, the wet paint will seep
into the gelatin in ways you can’t control as well as weakening the gelatin by dampening it by applying a light coat of acrylic sealer: Kryolan’s Fixier spray, Reel Creations’ Blue Aqua Sealer, Ben Nye’s Final Seal, plastic cap material (which works great), or BJB Enterprises’ SC-115. I think this stuff is awesome, especially as a thin coating over polyurethane; it is water based and dries very quickly to form a very soft, stretchy skin.
2. Remember how you’ve been told that nothing sticks to silicone except silicone? Things we need to use really don’t like to stick to the cold foam, either. However, applying a light coat of an acrylic sealer (BJB SC-115 is my preference for using with cold foam) will allow paint, or even makeup, to grab and stay. One word of caution: Apply just a small amount, a very light coat at a time, to prevent the urethane from wrinkling and collapsing due to moisture. It will return to its proper shape when all the moisture is gone. Since you are creating a watertight seal on the urethane, you want to make sure no moisture is trapped within the foam.
Once the appliances have been sealed, painting can proceed in the same manner described for painting foam latex.
You’ll need the following materials:
Skin Illustrator®, Sta-Color, or Temptu Pro® palettes
1-inch chip brushes Scissors
99% IPA in a spray bottle Fine brushes
1. With your appliance resting on a shaped form, open your palettes of Skin Illustrator®, Sta-Color, or Temptu Pro® and pick your colors.
2. Spray the color you will use first with alcohol and begin to liquefy the color with a cut-down chip brush. Both kinds of palettes have empty compartments for mixing color. You do not want the color too saturated or concentrated or it will go onto the appliance too rich and vibrant and will look artificial. The color should be soft and natural; add color gradually to give the appearance of depth.
3. Repeat step 2 for the other colors as well. Human skin, or any skin for that matter, is not one solid, uniform color. There are reds and blues, browns, yellows, and greens in our coloration.
4. Interchange spatter techniques by using the cut-down brush and your fingers as well as tapping the longer bristle brush against the handle of another brush or even against your hand.
5. Try getting some color on your fingers and gently dabbing your fingers onto the appliance to create age spots, if appropriate.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 until you get the effect you want, and then stop.
Once the appliance is applied, you can finish up with palette colors or you can stipple and brush other makeup, such as Ben Nye®. You decide. It’s your appliance.
Getting your prosthetic choppers looking right for the makeup you’ve created might be the easiest part of the whole process, but it’s by no means the least important. By easiest I mean it represents the least amount of surface area to color. Painting teeth to look natural (for character or creature makeup) is as critical as sculpting them to look real in the first place.
Provided you’ve already done all the prep work to get the dentures ready to be worn, you don’t need much else than what’s listed below. You
might or might not need or want to use the Ben Nye temporary stains on these teeth, but you will definitely want them in your kit, so in this case I think it’s better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them.