Those Darn Face Paints!

And I encourage you to look up professional painters and ask them directly for tips.

Just be warned, 95% of the people I've emailed over the years have never responded, and when they did they just told me to f*ck off or wanted me to pay $2000 for their 2-day workshops. :/

I get it, people are busy. Whatever.

Ask specific questions. If you ask "hey how do you paint?", that takes an entire freaking book to answer, they'll probably never respond. But if you ask "how do you apply the red tinge to eyeballs?", that's a much shorter answer and they can quickly toss you a few tips.

I'm far from an expert obviously, but-

There's no magic formula to painting, but unfortunately it's all frustrating trial and error when you don't have anyone to explain specific techniques.

On the other hand, I saw a guy down by the pier painting statues, and that dude quickly free-handed everything in front of everyone and they looked amazing. I didn't pick up any tips though, was just in a state of shock and awe lol.

Powders give you good control when shading at this small scale. Good for soft eye shadow, blush, etc. You might want to look into wet-blending to get a similar effect using the usual paints.

Skin isn't a uniform color. If you want it to be realistic you have to make it slightly mottled, layered, imperfect. If you want to get crazy, paint some snaking green/blue veins and give them a few light washes of the skin color so they look like they're under the surface.

Mucous membranes (rims of the eyes, inner lips, etc) tend to get a light glossy reddish wash. Also try adding some short very faint red streaks aiming towards the center from the corners of the eyeballs. I'm sure there's an order in which to paint them to get some depth.

I've only seen people free-hand eyes, surprised there aren't stencils out there for action figures. I've seen anime ones but they're too big.

I think ultimately you have to decide if it's worth spending 5 hours painting a face, because once it's on your shelf you're rarely ever going to be close enough to it to see all the painstaking detail lol.

You actually may have indirectly answered my question actually because I never thought to paint it as I would a 2D painting .