How to: Face/skin dark eldar???

[Ninjii]

Hey all,

I've been trying to reproduce the skin that is represented for the DE codex (face on the right):

And here the skin on the face (only) on the left:

From reading around WD, and forums/blogs, the different ideas were:

Tallaran Flesh + SW grey (1:1) base
-> dark flesh wash followed by a devlan mud wash into the repressions of the face
-> add some white to the base and highlight
-> add more white and highlight
-> add some diluted purple wash around the eyes..

The variations play more or less on the same colours but I can't seem to grasp the exact outcome that I want:

That greyish/purple shade on contrast of a really pale, close to white, maximum highlight.

What the outcome of my tries has been so far was too brown-elf skin pale pinkish face with little contrast...

I was thinking of starting to play around with paler greys around the tonality of pallid wych flesh etc...

So I was wondering how would you try and have that same exact skin (I fell in love with it for my Dark Eldars ever since I saw it and wanted to reproduce it but can't quite get it close enough...as stated above. )


Thanks in advance for any input!

P.S.: Please don't send me to a tutorial online, I've looked at 95% of them regarding this specific thing. None got close to the expected outcome. I'm asking as an artist to another artist, how would you achieve it.

 

[Chrispy]

I've had similar problems when wanting to do a "goth" or vampiric type skintone and what worked for me (At least with traditional paints) was adding a tiny amount of Payne's grey to reddish brown. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/Paynes_grey.png I think the closest thing to it in GW range is Dark Reaper, and adding it to white and Deathclaw brown gives you a very unsaturated skin color. In Vallejo, the closest colors would be Luftwaffe WWII Uniform and Light brown. This may not be 100% as the models above, but it creates a very stark contrast-y pale skin color. For more references, I recommend things like http://www.gothicbeauty.com/
Hope this helps!
PS- I'll hopefully have more of my artwork up on Deviantart that I used this effect on soon.

 

[Ninjii]

Hey, thanks for you reply! I definitely will give this combination a try...I think i just need to find the right grey and reddish brown and it could turn up quite cool! Cheers! Btw the colours you've mentioned as GW I've never heard of...my idea was to use a violet, red violet or similar from Vallejo, and a shadow grey grey...I need to wait for exams' end to start testing and then I will say if I found a good compromise!

 

[freakinacage]

What the outcome of my tries has been so far was too brown-elf skin pale pinkish face with little contrast...

Well you have highlighted your problem there. If it's too brown, add more purple to the mix. To increase the contrast, you need to darken your shading and push your highlights, probably to pure white

 

[10 ball]

I painted this mini on a masterclass day once. Can not remember the skin mix but I know there was ice blue in there, have you included it? It might be the colour your missing.

 

[Ninjii]

I painted this mini on a masterclass day once. Can not remember the skin mix but I know there was ice blue in there, have you included it? It might be the colour your missing.

Hmm didn't think about adding that...That's an interesting addition. Any chance you can remember what other colours you've used?

Thanks

 

[Bailey03]

I've just been working on a similar skin tone on my DE Scourge. You can sort of see it on my WIP thread but unfortunately it's only on the feet and thus a little hard to make out. You can see it's pale, but the photos don't show you the purple tinted shadows on the backside of the feet. I used a similar mix on a Talos that I started but never finished. I can try to take a few pictures as it'll show more of the look if you want. I'm using Reaper Master Series paints which have a lot more skin options. My mix is:

I start with maybe a 50/50 mix of Burgundy Wine and Fair Shadow. Any dark to medium purple would be fine, it's just the one I have. I then go up in two or three stages to maybe 80/20 or 90/10 of fair shadow to burgundy wine. I these shadows to be a little purple but not too strong. I then start mixing this into the fair skin color. Depending on the look you want (just pale or more purple) you can use pure fair skin or fair skin with a touch (maybe 95/5) of purple. From there I work up into fair highlight and then up to pure white.

I tend to work from shadows up to highlights. If you work from a midtone, I'd probably start with 50/50 fair skin and fair highlight. This will keep everything nice and pale.

As I said, I used a similar mix when I was working on the Talos. For that I used more of a medium purple than the darker burgundy wine. And, instead of pure fair highlight, I mixed it at maybe 80/20 or 70/30 with a light grey. So there are a few ideas for you to play around with. If you want to stick with GW paints instead of Reaper that's fine, just take a look at the color images above and find the closest match GW has. To get their skin mixes a little more pale I'd try mixing in white or maybe a bone color.