Painting the figure - Stockings, planning and testing first

Stockings - are a sheer/ thin item of knit wear. Which means that loght will behave differently, depending on both how the stocking is compressed or stretched, and the underlying skin/ muscle tissue underneath.

This is one of the few times that research is really Fun! I had to research and examine images of ladies legs in stockings........

Then the work - what paints will give me the results I want.

I tired adding various shades of black or grey to the base flesh tone, to see what happened. All I got was a muddy colour, so that ruled that out.

Thinning paints down got fiddly quickly, because it would mean too runny paint - lacked control.

A reference book advised to use a 'smoke' colour. This can be seen every day on a car windscreen, that tinted band at the top. It cuts down glare, without blocking vision. Simply, it is a translucent paint, depending on how many layers of it is applied.

So a comparison test on my colour swatch seemed to confirm it.

Now I was set. Just a bit of pre work to do on the legs, first.