Painting flesh & faces

[Leoric]

Hi there,

Just looking for some advice on how people paint flesh and faces. I\'m having a lot of trouble working on improving the quality of the flesh and faces I paint...often they come out looking there is a lot of \'make up\' on the face - its often too light and never looks quite right.

The technique I often use is to basecoat in Bestial brown, work in using bronzed flesh leaving bestial as the outlining or in eye sockets/mouth area and finish off with highlights of elf flesh or pallid flesh.

Yet I still get this \'pan\' effect!! which is also sometimes a little blotchy!!

Any techniques with examples would be greatly appreciated.

 

[GunjiNoKanrei]

There are great tutorials about painting female faces and skintones at Jenova\'s site.
At Sintricat\'s site you can find another awesome tutorial about female faces.

Hope this helps

 

[yrret]

I collected this in a thread....

Faces, Skin, Flesh I update it when I see a new one.

 

[Leoric]

Thanks

Great links, many thanks for the help.

Time to read and put some of that into practice.

Hopefully (once I get the digital cam.) i will be able to put the fruits of my labour onto the site.

 

[U4-Welcome]

The key to faces that don\'t hit you like a truck : when shading or using darker colors, use brown instead of black to darken (e.g. eye sockets should be dark brown, not black). Similarly, when using lighter colors, use an off-white (white + bit of brown or white + bit of flesh) instead of pure white ; e.g. the whites of the eyes should be rather cream-colored. By thus reducing contrast, faces look much more natural.

 

[TobiWan]

Originally posted by U4-Welcome
when shading or using darker colors, use brown instead of black to darken (e.g. eye sockets should be dark brown, not black).

Yep, absolutely. With one exception: If you\'re painting freaky undead gothic stuff you can shade the area below the eyes with a (face color of your choice, preferably pale)+black mix... this will look as if the eyes are sitting very deep in their recesses.

Have a nice day and merry X-mas,
Tobi

 

[Badaab]

Flesh and faces

I don\'t know who this will help, but I started up a thread with a link to my Pbase site and my accompanying two flesh tutorials (both are for caucasian flesh at this point, there\'ll be another coming soon to cover a few other ethnicities). Simply to avoid the linking around the web from thread to thread, here\'s a link to my Pbase site.
The tutorials are pretty easy to find, as they each have their own gallery, and run step-by-step. I\'d suggest reading number one before number two, because number two builds on number one. Questions, comments, or whatever can be either left for me and the tutorials in the other thread, through pm, or over at Pbase.

Joe

 

[Demigod]

useful stuff here, I like to use dwarf or elf flesh to paint my faces as I think they tend to look the most natural.

 

[Cerridwyn1st]

How do you get good skin? Practice, baby, practice!

If you\'ve been studying the links given, then the biggest thing you need to do is practice. In addition to Jenova\'s site, try Paintrix, Jen Haley\'s site.

If your paints are looking too much like overdone makeup, maybe you need to thin them. If you look at the base coats on the given sites, they are so thin as to almost be translucent. The added layers smooth it out and add depth. Use Magic Wash (the recipie is in the articles section)

The tones may smooth out when you add your sealer. I put a coat or two of satin Kryolyn under the Dull Coat, and it seems to give the skin a nice glow.

My attempts at getting better with painting skin have included:

1) Study the masters
2) Get online help from someone that knows what he or she is looking at (Thanks, Dragonsreach!)
3) Practice, practice, and practice some more!

I\'ve been working very hard on getting nice looking skin.

 

[Trevor]

I find faces and flesh are totally hit and miss, sometimes they turn out great and other times not so great, and I can\'t seem to repeat a good job, its just chance.

 

[Leoric]

Success?

Well, after following links here to tutorials and following the advice I painted my first face that I judge to be reasonably successfull, and doesnt look like plastered on makeup or plastic surgery.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/?id=40549

The tutorials and advice given and linked to /really/ helped. Many thanks

 

[Badaab]

Flesh and faces

Looking nice there, Leoric... while the face isn\'t necessarily the most prominent piece of this miniature, given your use of such vibrant colors on his clothing and armor, it still helps that the face is painted to the same caliber- as havin a weakly painted face on a miniature is a big let down in general.

@Trevor: I can\'t stress that practice is the most important part of painting flesh and faces. But, beyond that, finding a series of colors that works for you, and sticking with it, will help in your quest for consistency. I usually stick to the same few colors for faces (GW Scorched Brown, Snakebite Leather, Dwarf Flesh, and Elf Flesh), and then shift darker or lighter for the given application. Since the colors are so familiar to me, I know how they\'ll react when I shift up or down my given spectrum.

Joe