skintones

Painting Skintones

Many people find painting skin to be one of the most diffecult aspects of mini-painting.
I believe this is because the layers of paint need to be very smooth when painting skin. When painting cloth, hair, or metal, getting the paint a little rough isn't a disaster, but when painting skin, an unsmooth layer looks WIERD! Therefore when painting skin it's extremely important to thin your paints.

I've included recipies for Caucasian, Indian, Egyptian, Pale, and Zombie skin in this tutorial.
If you are looking for a skintone recipe for Drow skin, I suggest you check out my Drow painting tutorial.

Caucasian Skin

I use the following colours for painting caucasian skin:

Bronzed Flesh (BF), Flesh Wash (FW), Elf Flesh (EF) and Skull White (SW) (all GW)

1. Basecoat with BF.
2. Glaze with thinned down FW (5-10 parts water, 1 part FW). Do this 3-5 times. Let dry between each layer.
3. Highlight with BF.
4. Highlight with EF.
5. Highlight with EF + SW (1 part of each).

Indian Skin

Almost all the other skintones are easier than caucasian skin. My Indian skintone is no exception. I only use two colours: Dark Flesh (DF) and Vermin Brown (VB) (both GW).
1. Basecoat in DF.
2. Highlight with VB.

Egyptian Skin

I use three colours for painting Egyptian Skin: Snakebite Leather (SL), Scorched Brown (SB), and Bleached Bone (BB) (all GW).
1. Basecoat in SL.
2. Shade with SB.
3. Rehighlight with SL.
4. Highlight with a mixture of SL and BB. I usually don't put a lot of BB in the mix, maybe one part BB and two parts SL.

Pale Skin

A good colour for vampire skin. Especially female vampires since the colour is a little pinkish.
Colours used: Elf Flesh (EF) and Skull White (SW) (both GW).
1. Basecoat in EF.
2. Highlight with SW. Make sure to thin the paints, especially SW since that one tends to be a little grainy.

Zombie Skin

For a nice sickly green skintone I use Camo Green (CG) and Rotting Flesh (RF) (both GW).
1. Basecoat in CG.
2. Highlight with RF.