"Indian Skin" Topic

I'm about to start on an Indian army from the period 500 – 100 BC and I wonder what you would suggest as a standard skin tone ?

TIA

The footsloggers would be significantly darker, pretty much from the Mauryas to the Moghuls. There's an enormous range of skin tones in India.
The charioteers and elephant crews might look about right with a 50/50 mix of yellow ochre and Caucasian pink skin; in a smaller scale you might want to exaggerate the Asian look with more darkening and yellow, but they should look far from central African.
Nobody seems to have the courage to go the whole way and give them the brightly-dyed beards that Duncan Head refers to.

I mainly use MA36 ("Eurasian Flesh" from colour party with a tinted varnish.

I mostly didn't do dyed beards, but did on a couple of my command figures :-)

I would use a darker flesh for the rank & file, with a dark brown wash, or "Dark Tone" from Army Painter.

For the rest of the army, I'd consider a dark flesh with a more modest brown wash to get a sort of "caramel" color for the skin.

YMMV, but that's what I'd consider.

In general, lighter skin tones in the north of India, darker further south, at least in modern India.
Obviously darker if the chap has spent time in the sun!

This is the best article I've seen on painting skintones:

link

Fab article especially as I am just getting into ancient Egyptians and nubians and sea people.

Here is another thing to consider: A great deal of the Indian army was wearing white, and others wore some "pastel" shade, though the higher caste folks had much better material and dyes, etc.

Anyway, that white clothing, even if it is only a loincloth, per se, will make the exposed skin tones appear darker than they actually are. Therefore, you might want to play around a bit with lighter skin tones to see how the finished figure "looks".

I prime with white, rather than black, and use a couple of thinner layers to get the skin tones I want, then add a wash of Army Painter soft tone or strong tone, depending upon the brightness of the clothing.

This is going to sound absurd, but it really works. I paint my Indian skin purple, almost plum, and let that be the shadows, and paint all raised surfaces with a reddish brown. It gives them definition at a distance; they're richer and more eye-catching than just using shades of brown. Pics when I'm not super busy.