Painting dark flesh my way

 Just a quick post,

I had a request over on DakkaDakka on my tutorial for painting faces, they wanted to know if it was possible to use the technique to paint dark skin tones.

Answer = Yes!

Using the same technique from Painting Faces My Way to get dark skin tones and again using SWG to highlight. The pictures are a little dark and grainy im afraid, but they still show what you can acheive.
 
Using Dark Flesh as a base:




Using Scorched Brown as a base:





I love the way a face can really bring a model to life, as you can see below; although they are not fully painted the painted heads bring the WIP guardsmen to life.

Painting faces my way

Ok, I am sick of painting blue so I thought I would take a break.

 

Here is a rough tutorial on how I paint faces using only Tallarn Flesh and Space Wolf Grey.

First, I take the head and clean the mould lines using the edge of a hobby knife with a brand new blade.

Next I undercoat the head in Black.

Now paint the flesh areas with Tallarn Flesh mixed with a little water. This will take 2 coats if you don’t use too much water, to get a solid but smooth colour. I left the recesses on the head with only one coat, so the eyes and around the jaw have a slight shadow to them from the black undercoat coming through.

Now i mix the TF with Space Wolf Grey at about 4:1. I leave the recesses with the base coat and use this mix on the exposed areas, such as the forehead, cheeks ears, jaw and chin.

Nest i add some more SWG to my mix, about 3:1 now. At this stage i am looking at adding highlights to the prominently raised areas on the face, such as the brow, nose, ear, chin, around the mouth and the outer edge of the jaw.

The final highlights are done pretty much by feel alone, but first it is roughly 2:1 TF:SWG to pick out the raised areas around the eyes, nose and mouth. 

The last highlight is approx. 1:1 and is used on the tip of each brow, the tip of the cheeks and the tip of the nose.

After the last step I used a fine brush to paint his eye sockets black, followed by bleached bone on the actual eye but being careful to leave a black outer rim for definition. Then it was just a case of adding a couple of dots for pupils and painting the teeth BB too.

Using the SWG really works well with my army as they have the blue and grey armour, but the technique really works well with nearly any other scheme. 

No doubt there are other much better tutorials out there, but this is how i do my faces, so why not give it a try and see how it works out for you? 


*** Dark Flesh Tutorial has been added - Rob/Apoc 20/08/11 ***

If like me when i first started, you struggle as to where you need or don’t need to put your highlights, i recommend taking a look on GW's site and their 'Eavy metalpainting faces guide (You need to be logged in to see the article) or having a flick through some of the articles on CMON. 

Anyway, i need to get back to painting lots of blue before A Game of Thrones comes on.

Any C and C on the tutorial would be greatly appreciated, and who knows maybe i will do more or not depending on the feedback ;o)

Stay Frosty,

Apoc

Quick and easy urban basing

Since i have the photos in my photobucket account from my last guard army attempt i though i may as well chuck these on the blog too.

This is a nice and easy way to make good looking urban bases quickly and more cheaply than buying a stack of resin (Yes I am bitter that I don't get the freebie bases some of the better bloggers get sent for free! lol).

I think these are pretty self explainetry so no guide just pics and a couple of finished examples.

Pretty straight forward stuff, but if you have any questions feel free to ask.

Apoc

Let it snow...

For anyone wanting to know how i do my snow here is a very rough guide to what i do and use.

First up, you need supplies:

Snow flock, a mixing cup, PVA glue and something to mix with (I use coffee stirrers or lollipop sticks personally).

I mix the snow 50/50 with the PVA glue and add water until I get the desired toothpaste/porridge consistency so it's not runny but not like dough.

You need to play around a little to get the mix right, but when it is you can drop in on and it flows just enough to get a pretty realistic look.

Once you have the mix looking right, take your base (using an unpainted junk base for this example) and using your mixing tool, drool a small amount of the mix where desired.

Now you can use a wet brush or tool to manipulate the snow to how you want it and smooth any marks left over from the last step.

On the base in the post below, it took 2 layers to make it look thick and fluffy.

I made up half a plastic disposable cup's worth, which if coved up properly should last a week or so for wore applications. if it dries out just add a little water.

you can also add a little white or ice blue paint to the mix to enhance the colour a little.

So that's my (Very) rough guide to how I do snow, hope it helps someone out but if not at least it make me look like I blog alot ;o) and it's a nice break from not painting my guard ;oD

Here is some pics of the ogres I used this method on:

Some old pics in bad light (as are all i take at the moment! will set up a light tent one weekend!)

Cheers for looking and hope it wasn't too painful to look at ;oP


Apoc