Thank you very much for the comments guys, very much appreciated, after the fight I had with Barbossa and major dip in mojo I was pleased how fast I managed to get this far.
So, these are all Vallejo colours, I assume there are equivalents out there eg. Andrea etc.
Now if this is old news to you all I apologise, not teaching anyone to suck eggs.
I made a wet palette, this is a new one to me as well as I always used an artists 10 dimple palette and got fed up with the paint drying out so fast, especially as my magnifying lamp is an old fashioned screw in bulb type and throws out some heat, the paint dries on the brush before I've even got it to the resin sometimes, it "jugs out some rads" as they say.
If anyone wants to know about a wet palette there's instruction videos out there, there's no mystery, I bought a click top lid lunch box, 600ml, 13.5 cm x 13.5 cm, luckily the kitchen towel I use is 27 inches long so no origami to get sheets of paper to fit, just fold in half and cut, then add a sheet of baking parchment, my OCD made me make a template so I can cut them quickly and easily and have spares ready to go, instead of putting the kitchen towel and paper in the tub I put them in the lid, makes life a bit easier.
Base flesh colour is Vallejo Beige Red 70.804, with a small amount of matt black 70.950 and matt white 70.951, if you mix the colours across the wet palette you can make as many shadow, base and highlight shades as you wish, the shadows and reds were chocolate brown 70.872, black red 70.859 and matt red 70.957, these were applied as very thin washes, basically coloured water, there's probably 30 or 40 coats on the cheeks to get the redness, wait for each layer to dry before adding another to avoid streaks, also pre wetting the surface helps with blending edges and doing away with "coffee stains" where the water evaporates from the center and leaves the pigment along the edges.
The eyes I always do first, to make sure they're pointing the same way and are the same size, I will try Ben Komets technique of painting the eyes after the flesh tones.
First work out where you want the eyes to look, I made a dark brown, just chocolate brown and black and painted the iris, the bottom half of the eye was neat chocolate brown, Orlando Bloom has dark brown eyes, only painting the bottom half of the iris leaves the effect of the shadow from the eyelid, pupils are matt black, I added a small dot of white in the top right (as you look at the bust) then a small reflection in the bottom left using chocolate brown and white, everything received a coat of Windsor and Newton Matt artists varnish from a rattle can, once this was dry I applied a coat of Tamiya X-22 clear to the eyes with a dot of clear in the center.
I hope that in some way explains, in a long winded rambling fashion.
Regards.
Mick.
