TIPS ON PAINTING FACES

Fooo [mjfgates@hotmail.com]
from the Warzone Forum

I do this two ways. Both work reasonably well. Way one:

Basecoat with a mix of yellow and white. 
Highlight with pure white-- blend the highlights as well as possible.
Wash with red-brown.

You've gotta have the right yellow for this to work-- more of a
yellow-ochre than a "pure," bright yellow. Otherwise, the figs come out
looking sort of orange. It's fast, so you can do rank-n-file figs this
way, and if you get it right it looks very good. Even if you get it wrong,
it looks okay.

Second way:

Mix up a "dark flesh" tone with yellow, white, and red-brown. 
Paint deep shadows-- under the chin, between fingers, under the nose, 
between eyes & eyebrows, under/behind ears.
Mix a little more white in.
Paint not-quite-as-deep shadows-- lines along the side of the nose and
down the sides of the mouth, eye sockets, inside ears, etc.
Mis a little more white in.
Paint almost-not-really-shadowed areas-- neck, lower area of cheeks.
More white.

...

This takes about, oh, between five and seven rounds to do it right. It
takes FOREVER-- a couple of hours to do flesh tones on one figure.
However, results are VERY good.

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Vulkan [richburg@texas.net]
from the Warzone forum

It's not tough, it just takes practice. I start with white primer. Then
paint flesh areas with Citatel's "Elf Flesh". Polly S "Human Flesh" is
better, but I haven't been able to get it in some time.

Anyway, wash the face/skin with brown ink. Paint the raised areas with the
flesh tone. Now you've got shading and highlights. Now, wash the area
again with a shade of burnt sienna or similar color. Finally highlight the
raised features again. That's it.

Painting eyes is just learned through practice. 

I use citadel paints and Winsor Newton Inks. The inks are available from
better art stores and only cost about $2 US each.

Check out my website for examples of my painted miniatures. There are
plenty of examples of faces, etc.

http://richburg.home.texas.net/gallery.html 

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Griefbringer [rkoivune@cc.hut.fi]
from the Warzone forum

I paint the faces on my figures in a quite simple way (no highlighting)
but they look pretty OK.

I start with white undercoat, then paint the face using a "tanned flesh"
paint from miniature paints. Then I paint recessions (like behind ears,
under the nose, eyes) with slightly thinned down brown paint and let it
dry. Then I wash the face with with very heavily thinned down dark paint
(and let dry again).

I paint the the mouth black, and pick out the eyebrows with black or dark
brown (depending the colour of hair on my fig). Then I take out my finest
brush and carefully paint eyes white. Then I very carefully paint a small
blue dot for iris. Looks pretty good.

If you want to make it look even better you can use some highlighting -
but I personally don't use much highlighting on gaming pieces.

Couple of important points
- painting the eyes requires patience and practice
- painting the eyebrows really adds form to the face
- by varying the positions of iris you can vary the expression on face -
close to the nose and he looks very focused, far from the nose and he
looks like a lunatic

---

CPT America wrote:

The easiest way I've found follows:

  o basecoat skin areas with white
  o use one of the fleshtone paints every company puts out (I use GW's
Bronzed Flesh)
  o give it a wash with Brown or Flesh Wash (just a thinned down brown
color that goes to the low areas)
  o at this point you can be finished, or highlight with the original
Flesh tone.