pale skin

Pale Skin Tutorial

Every now and then I get asked for hints how to paint the pale skin like I do. I've tried my best in replying these requests by writing simple tutorials, but when thinking of it more, explaining how something is done is far less interesting and educating than actually showing it.

Now I won't be showing you 2 hour video about me painting miniature. That would be just plain dull thing to do. What I will do is present a short tutorial with step-by-step pictures how to paint the pale skin, similar to those Arco Evisorators that I've painted.

So here we go...

First of all, I prime my miniature almost always in grey. I find it being gentle to my eyes and makes it easier for me to perceive details.

For base colour I used mix of five colours: Codex Grey, Skull White, Tallarn Flesh, Khemri Brown.

Add more white to mixture and paint couple of highlight layers. Remember to keep the paint enough thin.

Shade everything with a wash made from a mixture of Asurmen Blue and Gryphonne Sepia. Asurmen Blue breaks the over-warm tone of the Gryphonne Sepia. This trick was introduced to me by Steve from Spyglass Asylum.

Now comes the interesting part. Add some depth to recesses by painting some brown-red ink in them. I'll get back to this later in this post.

Paint couple of thin layers with the basic colour made out of those 5 paints used in the first few steps, highlighting a bit with adding a drop of white in the mixture.

Add some blue grey in the mix and start shading the areas between the original skin colour and the deep red ink areas, blending these two radical colours together with the cold blue tone. Blue works also as a complimentary colour in shaded areas, making the skin more alive, so make a note in what sort of lighting the character could be standing in.

Now you can start seeing how the red and blue tones make the pale skin look like a translucent layer of thin skin; joint areas are red and deep, rich with blood, whereas large surfacing areas are pale, tight and low in blood. Makes sence in a way, doesn't it?

Keep working on with the skin by highlighting it, adding more white to the base colour as you go. Final strokes should be made with plain Skull white. Add some details with Scorched Brown, like moles etc.

There you go! As you can see, this receipt is quite basic and simple, but requires patience to pull out. You shouldn't mind using bold and strong strokes, as long as you keep your paints enough thin and running. Have fun experiencing different techniques and don't mind about smooth blends.

I hope you will find this tutorial helpful in your task painting the pale skin. Please drop a comment if you need further information regarding the steps.

Cheers!

- Kari

Monday, July 11, 2011

Tips & Tricks - Fine Rope

It's time for me to become a c-c-c-combo breaker and end Mikko's chain of posts with this rude interruption. I've been working very intensively with one of my new projects and haven't really had time to post anything at the Spiky. Until now!

Today I'll be sharing a neat trick with you. The trick shall be called as "how to create a fine rope for your miniature project". I'm aware that there are many ways to do rope in 28mm scale, eg. putty-rope, metal wire rope, real thread rope and so on. I find those previously mentioned methods a bit clumsy for my liking and wanted to find out how to do more realistic rope in 28mm scale.

So I went to my storage room and rummaged around to find some old cords to use in my plans. I happened to find an old Amiga 500 mouse that had been blasted open and decided that it would be perfect object for my little project...

Destroyed Amiga mouse.

So, I cut the mouse's wire open and found out that it had this very fine metal wire braiding running through the whole wire. I cut four to five of those strings and twisted them in to one thicker wire. The outcome was just what I had been looking for. This twisted rope has nice texture in its surface and it really looked awesome. You can also easily vary the thickness of the wire by using more or less of the thin strings, what ever is your plan...

Metal wire braiding.

Solid copper wire and two self-made fine ropes.

This string rope holds it form when bent and doesn't unbend