It is the natural color of the clay; I rarely paint my sculptures - out of 150+ sculptures around 3-4 I've used acrylic color. There are many options nowadays when it comes to clay colors. As for the proportions, I guess I often do that either big heads or big shoulders or big hands, whatever is important to me in each sculpture I tend over size it. I have worked on perfectly proportional pieces but when they were done they don't look like mine at all.