  We propose a method to study the second-order critical lines of classical
spin-$S$ Ising models on two-dimensional lattices in a crystal or splitting
field, using an exact expression for the bare mass of the underlying field
theory. Introducing a set of anticommuting variables to represent the partition
function, we derive an exact and compact expression for the bare mass of the
model including all local multi-fermions interactions. By extension of the
Ising and Blume-Capel models, we extract the free energy singularities in the
low momentum limit corresponding to a vanishing bare mass. The loci of these
singularities define the critical lines depending on the spin S, in good
agreement with previous numerical estimations. This scheme appears to be
general enough to be applied in a variety of classical Hamiltonians.
