1/16 scale face painting

[Wellington 33 & 76]

Dear All

I have just started a 1/16 figure and i wondered what is the best way to start the face. Is it base colour for this i am using Brown sand and then start the deep shadows, for this i am using base colour and burnt Red and finish with high lights using base colour and basic skin tone.

If any one know of a good tutorial using these paint colour please let me know

Cheers

Matt

 

[Ethan]

could you post up a picture of the style you want it to look like? That would help in knowing what kind of advice to give. Also what kind of face are you going to paint?

 

[Wellington 33 & 76]

Hi Ethan

The figure i have is 1/16 German waffen ss machine gunner from Russia, so i think he needs to look a little fresh in the face

 

[Ethan]

I use reaper paints so they have shadow, base, and highlights set up so I only have to mix tones together to get what I want so let me see if I can direct you to what I do.

For a fresh face (I would call this, Fair Complexion) with probably wind burn from Russia

Start with a mid tone and don't thin it very much, you want an even color


work the basic shadows with thin this out pretty good so it blends slightly with the base

Then use thinned well to blend all the colors together. as you push this around it shoud loosen up the other colors but if it doesnt I have three mixes of all the colors at the same time and add a bit of one and then a bit of another and blend them at the edges.

Now at the same time you have to thing of the stark highlights and wind color.

Add to the top of nose, forehead, top of cheeks, chin etc. wherever you want the brightest color to be. then mix a tiny bit of thinned to the side of the nose, under the eyes, etc. wherever you want a slight coloring.

finally, being very very careful, thin out which should be a blushing rose color. and apply to the cheecks and tip of the nose, wherever you want wind burn. VERY small amounts at a time so it blends. you may want to do this as you work in the blending color of Fair Shadow because it will look almost airbrushed if you do. Quite nice really.

After that add any of each color, very thinned to whatever you want changed. After each large step you need to wait for everything to dry all the way because they blend more than you think they do when wet or just barely dry. I have thought a piece had great contrast and went to bed, woke up the next morning and I could barely tell! I hope this helps!

The colors are named after the Reaper paints I use but you should be able to mix your own from whatever colors you have.

Also if you want more working time in acrylics. Instead of thinning your paint with just water, get an acrylic Matte, fluid medium from your basic hobby shop in the art supply section. It's used to thin out tube acrylics for painters. Mix one part of this to one part isopropyl alcohol, to 8 parts denatured water. now you have a thinning agent that will separate the pigments and spread them evenly while thinning the paints and giving you a much longer working time. I have a bottle with a dropper tip and use this for thinning for airbrushing and hand painting and it works really well! I just came across it this week.

 

[housecarl]

There's this by Jaume Ortiz. http://www.planetfigure.com/threads/painting-a-face-step-by-step.12338/
Or these that Einion posted:
http://www.militarymodelling.com/news/article.asp?a=3490
http://www.planetfigure.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30026
http://www.coolminiornot.com/article/aid/43
http://www.coolminiornot.com/article/aid/55
Carl.

 

[Pepperpot]

The link to packetloss and mb-miniatures do not seem to work anymore. Thank you for the other ones though

 

[housecarl]

The link to packetloss and mb-miniatures do not seem to work anymore. Thank you for the other ones though

I've edited it, as it was quite an old link.
Sorry about that,
Carl.

 

[captnenglish]

I use reaper paints so they have shadow, base, and highlights set up so I only have to mix tones together to get what I want so let me see if I can direct you to what I do.

For a fresh face (I would call this, Fair Complexion) with probably wind burn from Russia

Start with a mid tone View attachment 91608 and don't thin it very much, you want an even color


work the basic shadows with View attachment 91609 thin this out pretty good so it blends slightly with the base

Then use View attachment 91610 thinned well to blend all the colors together. as you push this around it shoud loosen up the other colors but if it doesnt I have three mixes of all the colors at the same time and add a bit of one and then a bit of another and blend them at the edges.

Now at the same time you have to thing of the stark highlights and wind color.

Add View attachment 91611 to the top of nose, forehead, top of cheeks, chin etc. wherever you want the brightest color to be. then mix a tiny bit of thinned View attachment 91612 to the side of the nose, under the eyes, etc. wherever you want a slight coloring.

finally, being very very careful, thin out View attachment 91613 which should be a blushing rose color. and apply to the cheecks and tip of the nose, wherever you want wind burn. VERY small amounts at a time so it blends. you may want to do this as you work in the blending color of Fair Shadow because it will look almost airbrushed if you do. Quite nice really.

After that add any of each color, very thinned to whatever you want changed. After each large step you need to wait for everything to dry all the way because they blend more than you think they do when wet or just barely dry. I have thought a piece had great contrast and went to bed, woke up the next morning and I could barely tell! I hope this helps!

The colors are named after the Reaper paints I use but you should be able to mix your own from whatever colors you have.

Also if you want more working time in acrylics. Instead of thinning your paint with just water, get an acrylic Matte, fluid medium from your basic hobby shop in the art supply section. It's used to thin out tube acrylics for painters. Mix one part of this to one part isopropyl alcohol, to 8 parts denatured water. now you have a thinning agent that will separate the pigments and spread them evenly while thinning the paints and giving you a much longer working time. I have a bottle with a dropper tip and use this for thinning for airbrushing and hand painting and it works really well! I just came across it this week.

Thanks for posting this Ethan, I use Reaper skintones (a mix of all of them) exclusvely, so this is very useful.

 

[Ethan]

Your very welcome Matthew, I hope it helps you; the thinning mixture was a great joy for me to learn about. I just randomly decided to try it with hand brushing and was so impressed I almost made a thread just to get it out there!

 

[Whiteraven_2001]

I've got most of the Reaper flesh triads; the only color in that grouping I don't have is the entrail pink. I'll have to give that palette a shot!

 

[Ethan]

I used the entrails pink only because the site didn't have a label for Blushing Rose, which I used liberally along with Sunburnt Flesh to add tones to my skin colors. I would think the Entrails color has to be very close to Blushing Rose. The pics aren't as good as I would like but check out my threads under Painting, of the 1/6 Firefly head paintings. The last one I airbrushed with Reaper paints but the others were all handpainted using similar techniques to what I described above, also Reaper. They might spark something for ya!

 

[Wellington 33 & 76]

thanks guys

I will post some images later

Cheers

Matt

 

[Jeff]

I would really suggest you take a look at some of the 1/6 scale sites they are doing things on those sites that make the figures look like real men. Quite amazing work.