How to Paint Little Hands in Oil

One arm of Raven's is in shadow and the other is almost entirely in light, so I first mixed my colours until I was happy with a shadow flesh tone and a highlight flesh tone.

Little fingers are tricky to paint because they tend to be more sausage-shaped.  I made sure that each finger was the correct length and width by measuring them with a ruler.  Remember the rule - to make an object appear round, shade around the edges and highlight the middle to create the illusion of it coming toward you.  Don't make the fingernails too prominent as I did at first - they are tiny and flesh coloured with a nice clean light pink for a bit of shine.

I smooshed that shadowed arm into the background so there wasn't a hard line in the shadows, by making the background very dark in a similar colour (Scarlet and Ultra Blue).  I may change the background later but at least the arm is nice and soft.  I repainted everywhere the arm was in shadow to blend it in (under the arms on the stuffed toy, under the sleeves and shirt).