Skintones

I'll be adding step-by-step pics here as I do some, but for now I'm just listing colour recipes and an image of a model using those tones. The colours will almost certainly all be Vallejo Model Colour - if they're another line I'll point that out. Caucasian skintones are overly represented here, as most darker skintones I tend to mix on the fly and forget later, so there's not much point putting some of the more funky skinones up until I've redone them and written down the steps.

Basic caucasian

Base colour: half and half Beige Brown and Basic Skintone. Highlight by adding white. I use this most frequently because it's so easy and quick.

For a creamy redhead:

adding Cavalry Brown to the basecoat of Beige Brown and Basic Skintone, highlighting with basic skintone then white gives a skintone like this, which looks good with red hair:

Pale, out of the sun, and possibly old as well:

adding quite a bit of Purple to a base colour of Cork and a bit of Black Red,highlighting with Pale Flesh gives this pale look - it's not as cold as the Elf skintone below, but is definitely a way to add variety.

Peaches&Cream - warm caucasian.

Base colour: half and half Cork and Light Brown. Yup, it's going to look really orange at first... that's why it goes peachy. Highlight by adding white, working up as pale as you like - I sometimes end up glazing the tip of the nose, and the tops of the cheekbones with nearly pure white. I try to have a hint of the base colour in there so it's harmonious.

 

Elfy or Vampiric - really pale, cool toned flesh

This is one of the wierdest mixes I do on a regular basis. The simple way to do it would be to base with Cork, and highlight using Pale Flesh and finall white... but that would be too easy now, wouldn't it? I was playing around one time and ended up using a mix of around 6 colours, that gives a colours that's sorta like cork, but a bit colder. The base colour is a mix of equal parts Black Red, Purple, Azure and Camo Green (Vallejo Game Colour), or a teensy bit of Dark Green (Vallejo Game Colour) - the latter is colder and darker.

To that mix, add about an equal quantity of Cork. If that all looks too dark, add Light Grey or Sky Grey to lighten it. What you end up with is a really awful colour that looks nasty on the pallette and nasty on the mini. Don't worry, that's a good thing :-). Give it a good smooth coat on the skin, so it's not patchy, and then start highlighting with Pale Flesh. About halfway through your highlighting process feel free to switch to white, as the pale flesh can get a little pink. One thing about this mix is that it has a tendency to separate on the pallette (some of the colours involved are particularly prone to it, like Purple and Camo Green), so you've gotta stir it up now and then. The final highlight can be white here as well.

Note there's quite a bit of variation in the pics here - some of it's the photo, but a lot is just that there were variations in the mix. Monique has more brown, Lelith has more purple and grey, the Dragon Prince has less blue, and the Vamp is seriously pale.

 

Polynesian flesh tone

I still have this model, so I may have to rephotograph her too - the skintone is really quite a bit warmer. The basecolour was primarily Flat Brown, with a little Dark Angels Green (Citadel), Purple, and a small amount of Sunset Red and Yellow Ochre. So around 4:2:2:1:1. I think. I highlighted with a 1:2 mix of sunset red:yellow ochre, and followed this for several layers - only around 2-3 progressions of actual colour mixing, but lots of layers of the thinned colour, building up intensity. On this particular model I added too much sunset red at one point, so she looked a little sunburned which I rather liked. After that (which was around the 3rd highlight mix I think), I added in Flat Flesh progressively until I switched to pure Flat Flesh for the last few highlights.

Pale and not a bit healthy:

Here I used a basecolour of 2:2:1 Cork, Azure and Black Red. I highlighted it with Light Grey for a while, and finished off with white. It actually looked too unhealthy and grey, so I glazed a couple of times with really thinned down flesh ink to add back a hint of warmth.

Purply Brown - a natural looking Drow:

The basecoat here was a mixed purple and Cork. If you're sensing a theme here - yep, I use heaps of Cork and quite a bit of purple... This particular purple is a very dark colour, made by mixing equal quantities of Red and Stormy Blue (Vallejo Game Colour). It's a deep, somewhat muted purple that I use alot, because quite a few pre-mixed purples tend to bleed through lighter layers painted ontop without a coat of spray varnish, and I find that pretty irritating. She was highlighted with mixes of grey, cork, and pale flesh, possibly with blue added. I know, this one's really vague - I'll paint another model in a similar way soon and put up a proper recipe.