Skin tones

[hairyyahoo]

Yo to you all,

some of you may know that i'm repainting my guard army at the mo and i've thrown in some catachan models just for a bit of variety. this has reintroduced me to an aspect of painting that i had been out of touch with for a while, namely large areas of skin. i was just womdering what colours and methods you guys use for this.

tell me about your base coats shades and highlights and post pics if you got 'em. maybe this could be the 40k terra guide to human flesh tones.

[JoeGuardsman]

Ussually I do bestial brown start and I build up to an edge highlight of dwarf flesh. You can always just do flesh wash. I hear that other ranges have better skin tones but if you experiment you can find better ones.

[Ion Raptor]

quick skin tone I use Elf Flesh followed by a flesh wash followed by Elf flesh highlights

for nice models I use a Terracotta base, followed by dwarf flesh (leaving a bit of the base showing aroudn the sides), then a light Flesh wash. After that i do 50/50 Dwarf flesh/Elf Flesh highlights and then very few and thin elf flesh highlights. This was used in my "This is the end for you!" piece

[newpaintbrush]

Originally Posted by hairyyahoo

Yo to you all,

some of you may know that i'm repainting my guard army at the mo and i've thrown in some catachan models just for a bit of variety. this has reintroduced me to an aspect of painting that i had been out of touch with for a while, namely large areas of skin. i was just womdering what colours and methods you guys use for this.

tell me about your base coats shades and highlights and post pics if you got 'em. maybe this could be the 40k terra guide to human flesh tones.

Key phrase:

"Large areas"

Okay, there's really two ways to paint. The nice and neat version that ends up winning you prizes and painting contests, and the really insanely fast version that ends up with you painting a twenty-man unit in two nights. Since you can add details and whatnot to the last version, it is the way I generally recommend painting.

I'm gonna assume you want this done fast.

1. Spray prime.

2. Apply a slightly-watered down basecoat. This should be a step DARKER than whatever you're really gonna use. So you'd use watered down Dwarf Flesh, and Dark Angels Green if you wanted to end up with Bronzed Flesh and Catachan Green. Now, when you apply this basecoat, it's gonna be FAST and DIRTY. You're gonna get splatters on your models, not a whole lot, but you're definitely gonna see it. That's fine. Good, even, it shows you're keeping up the speed.

3. Okay, this is where things diverge. There's wetbrushing, and drybrushing. And depending on how bad-ass you are, or what effect you want, you want one or the other. Drybrushing's fine for textured stuff, like models with complex armor or musculature or whatever. Wetbrushing is what you have to use on large flat surfaces that you want to blend colors with (an Eldar jetbike is a perfect example). I'm gonna skip the wetbrushing 'cos it's not what you want for Catachan infantry.

4. So now you have 10 dudes with a watered-down coat of paint. They look kinda sloppy. That's okay. We're gonna take care of that in a second.

5. Now you take the color that's the step you really want, and drybrush. So, Bronzed Flesh and Catachan Green. Do it fast. Yeah, you're gonna splatter again. Doesn't matter. Trust me, it really doesn't.

6. Now here's where you take the lazy painter's blessing and apply it liberally. That is, you hit your models with watered-down ink-paint mixture. You hit the flesh areas with some fairly watered down Flesh Wash that has a bit of Bronzed Flesh mixed in, and you hit the green areas with some watered down Green Ink with Catachan Green mixed in. You have to do this step a bit more carefully. You don't want to splatter too much at this stage.

7. All the splatters you had are now blended in with the rest of the model because of the ink-paint mixture you just applied.

8. Drybrush the highlight color (Elf Flesh, and a 50-50 Bleached Bone-Catachan Green mix). VERY VERY VERY lightly.

Wee, it's all blended and highlighted and shadowed and stuff.

Now you paint the gun &c &c, and apply logos or whatever. The last 10% takes about 90% of the painting time.

[DeAd_cOmMaNdO]

my method is simple and quick and the results are great.

black undercoat. Dwarf flesh base. brown ink. paint dwarf flesh/bleached bone 3:1 over that, then highlight up to pure bleached bone. a few waterd down brown or chestnut washes and its done.

of course showcase and commission models require mor time. the basecoat will use any number of other colours from purples, browns, greys, greens or even yellows, depending on what type of model im painting.