Painting Faces

In this excellent article, used with permission from Dragonpaint’s site, we look at painting faces:

Everyone knows that the face on the mini can make or break the whole look. Personally, I think it’s the eyes are the problem (for me at least) I hate to admit how many I’ve done that end up looking like deer caught in the headlights.

All the colors used in this tutorial are from Vallejo, remember that you have to thin your color almost transparent to use this technique, in this way the different shades build up the highlight without obscure the details.

Step 1 black primer, eyes and teeth	Step 2 basecoat of Mahogany Brown
Step 3 mix Mahogany Brown and a bit of Flat Flesh, thin to semi-transparent and paint all but the deepest recesses, leave a thin brown line near the hair	Step 4 repeat the previous step with the same thinned color on the highlight points, the two layer of thinned color will add resulting in a lighter color and leaving a shade
Step 5 add some more flat flesh to the mix, thin down and add a layer to the highlight points	Step 6 paint the highlight with thinned down Flat Flesh (not so yellow like the picture, look at the colors ref.)
Step 7 add some dot of thinned down beige for the final highlight on the cheeks, nose, chin, eyebrows and so on – reduce the picture to the 25% to see the effect at the correct size	Colors used in this tutorial