7 replies to this topic

[Rastl]

For whatever reason when I'm confronted with something that is supposed to be human I have a terrible time doing a speed/army paint.

Any suggestions/patterns/lessons on how to do this and make it look semi-decent?

[Sergeant_Crunch]

The biggest problem I had was realizing that with 130 human faces that needed painting for my IG army it is impossible to paint them as well as if I were focusing on a single mini and expect to have them done in a reasonable amount. Once you realize that you don't have enough time to layer and glaze each face 20 times and that a base coat, highlight and wash are enough things become much easier.

[Lars Porsenna]

I use Reaper Master Series paints. For fair skinned dudes, I use the Fair skin triad, with the shadow wash mixed in with a little Flesh Wash (to give it a more naturalistic, ruddy complexion). I do a basecoat, wash (usually 3 times, and none too neat as the skin is the first step) and a drybrush/"dampbrush" highlight (usually 1). I can usually do an entire unit's worth of skintones in a single evening (much of that time is waiting for the wash to dry)...

Damon.

[Rastl]

Sgt is more in line with what I want to do for my factions. I just don't really like painting armies so if I start to go into detail work I'll never get done. I'm very much into the basecoat-wash-highlight process. But human skin just makes me nutso.

I have all the master series paints. I'm figuring to use the mid-tone for the base coat. Then give the whole fig a coat of brown wash. Highlight with the highlight skin color and do something with the eyes. That should be enough to make it work for the grunts. Higher level models get a little more lovin'.

Sound like a plan? Maybe use Chestnut for the wash?

[Joe Kutz]

I've got a 500ish figure pictish army that I painted up a few years ago...that makes faces look easy (nothing but skin on most of those guys...). Big thing is stepping away from the idea of painting a miniature and looking at it as painting an army.

Take a look at this picture:
Picture of People

You've got a bunch of people, from a fair distance away. But what details can actually be seen? Eyes...not really, just a dark spot. Mouth...sort of...more just either another dark smudge or white for teeth. When you are dealing with large groups like an army you don't need to worry about contrasts on the individual minis, rather contrasts between one mini and the next.

Normally I do a base coat in the one color and then follow up with a very controlled wash. By quickly removing the wash from the high spots (Q-Tips work great to wick the extra paint off from cheeks and foreheads before it starts to dry) you can achieve a very smooth paint job quickly. If you try to actually paint highlights you will likely get bogged down in brushing and blending or end up with very harsh transitions from one color to the next.

[ixminis]

Also Rastl, you may consider painting everything straight up using a more impressionistic style of painting. For me, it depends on the figures and the desired quality level to get to the right technique.

• Base coat, wash, basecoat, highlight = 4 layers (less impressionistic, more drybrushing)
• Mid-tone, Shadow, Highlight = 3 layers (can be impressionistic vs. exact if you let it)
• Shadow, Mid-tone, Highlight = 3 layers (can be impressionistic vs. exact if you let it)

• Sooo, play with the ideas you want to try with the different techniques you want to try.
• Decide which one you can accept (There are good suggestions above for figuring out one or more things to try).
• Make sure you time each single mini
• Then, go to town with an assembly line & measure it so you can compare vs. just one mini.

[anvil]

This only works for caucasian skin tones, but I start with one of the medium fleshes (left over thinking from when there was only one color for flesh) and then wash with GW flesh wash (that and their brown ink are the only colors of GW I still use). Let dry while doing a bunch of others. Forget to do anything else to the skin, a thin black line in the eyes and call them done. Looks fine for an army, and for the longest time, I thought it looked pretty good for display as well. The VGC dark flesh also mixes with white pretty realistically, if your going for negroid skin.

[Ironworker]

I'm definately in the camp that with entire units one can't expect ones skin tones to turn out as well as on individual minis. However I do usually paint skin and metals with more care than cloth and leather bits. Still my trooper skin tones usually don't get more than basecoat wash and three highlights like everything else. I just try to be more careful with the skin than say boots.