"Am I the only one that varies skin tones?" Topic

The current poll on orc skin has me wondering about something.

As a matter of course, whenever I paint skin tones, I put a little skin tone paint onto the pallet, paint five or so figs, then add a dash or some other color, and paint a few more, then add some other color and repeat the process. I do this because, in my experience, skin tone varies enormously, even within an ethnic group. From personal experience I've found that this is even more the case among individuals who spend large amounts of time outdoors, as soldiers are wont to do. For the labor invested I find this gives a much more realistic look to my figs.

Does anyone else do this?

Yes, I do, plus lots of ethnic skin tones, even in my fantasy and sci-fi armies.

Not so much within units but groups such as pirates and Cowboys yes.

VR
James Mattes

Nope. But I mostly paint 15mm and smaller. Still, this is a very good idea, I'll have to try it if my Reaper Bones ever come.

I vary the skin tone on my 28mm figs, usaly to avoid the boardom that mass painting instills.

The way I approach it, I paint units or armies, not individual figures.

When you look at it that way, varying the skin tones is not worth the extra effort. This is especially true of figures 15mm or smaller.

Yeah, I paint in small batches… mixing up new 'flesh' each time. So it's never quite the same and sometimes varies quite a lot.

Yup, I vary skin tone on fantasy armies as well as historical.

My Blood Bowl Orcs are varying shades of green. Blood Bowl Humans are varying ethnic tones too.

For the vast majority of painting I do I pre mix all my paints from just a few half litre bottles of primary colours storing these in empty glass vials from a science lab, rather than buy lots of little bottles or tinlets,

I have range of about seven shades I use for flesh from almost white for highlights to a very dark brown for shadows, Whatever I'm using for blocking in the main tones on one small batch of figures I'll use for finishing off the shadowing on the previous batch which I'll have blocked in with the lighter tone. So over several batches of figures I progressively work through all my shades/hues of flesh paint.

I vary both the base coat color and the wash, so that my army has many skin tones.

I'm painting nothing but individual minis for skirmish games, so I do use 2-3 tones for each ethnic group. I even used 3 tones of olive green for my Tharks for my Barsoom game since "A Princess of Mars" states that the older Green Martians have darker skin than the younger ones.

all the time

Regularly, although more with 28mm than 15mm stuff.

sometimes even try and match it to hair color

Yes, vary them and often try to make them look weather beaten.

No, Vallejo flesh straight out of the bottle for me.

Yes, what goes for 1 figure can go for 4,500 more. After all they are only 15-18mm high.

I hadn't considered it, but I suppose scale matters a lot with this concept. I paint mostly 25/28s, but I can see the detail being lost on 15s and smaller.

I use a wash/drybrush technique so I get a certain amount of variation between figures just from how much I thin the wash and how dry the brush is. Works for me.

Robert

Depends on the army. The fewer the poses available for my skirmish armies the more I tend to vary the skin tones but for my large historical armies I don't,

Depends. For an army, no, but for skirmish games or RPG figures, yes. (Oh, my usual scale is 25/28mm.)

Nope. I use "flesh" paint.

Yep, but only after doing some Zulus for foundry, used 3 different triads, for my German army I use 2 triads flesh and mediterranean flesh.

Sometimes. Not very often, though.

I painted up a platoon of modern USMC. I made them a mix of African Americans, Latinos and Blancitos. I did not vary the shades among the invididual groups though.

Always