"Painting Oriental Skin Tones" Topic

Gents;

Any advice as to what good color combinations work for Oriental skin tones. Specific combinations would be helpful, as would brand name. I paint from a black undercoat, and follow the Foundry system of layering.
Thanks.

Dave
miniwars.com

I always just painted them regular flesh color

Venatus,

What specific Asian ethnic groups do you have in mind?

For example, Huns and Mongols are going to differ from Japanese and Japanese are going to differ drastically from Thai and Cambodians.

depends. for most orientals just paint a little darker than usual and do black (or very dark brown) hair only, for contrast.

do NOT use yellow.

i find Vallejos "basic skin tone" darkened down a little does the job for east asians. for south east asians and near easterners i would maybe use something darker.

black facial hair on male near easterners is stereotypical but thus intuitive (as are sunglasses..)

also depends on the scale: for 15mm and downwards just use basic skin.

hope that helps a little.

some koreans, north chinese, japanese and the like tend to have quite light skin tones. especially on women this is traditionally regarded as beautiful ( - as it is in most european ciultures, nevertheless helps to remember). older japanese paintings dont paint skin white for nothing.

Thanks for the early feedback. As usual, I wasn't clear enough on my request. I am looking at painting 28mm Chinese. Specifically the new releases from T.A.G. They are the 'bee's knee', IMO! They are great in the flesh, er...lead, too!

Dave

I have just been experimenting on this very topic for my Back of Beyond Mongols. My best so far is to use a red-brown shadow (many pictures of Mongols show them with quite ruddy - wind burnt? - faces) and then a main colour of mediterranean flesh tone with a little ochre (yellowish brown) mixed in. High lights in pale flesh tone. It gives the right sort of look at 18 inches distance which is my aim.

what period chinese? i suppose the early ones? maybe Zhou (Chou) dynasty?

if so: i would go with mediterranean skin tones as mentioned aove, if you have experience with that.

if not: darkened vallejo basic skin is great.

I had a ton of samurai painted up with GW bronzed flesh..they looked fine.

Well my girlfriend is chinese and has very pale skin. And is very beautiful......better get that in in case she reads this....lol

larry h

I am painting Chinese at the moment.

My normal proceedure for skin is:

GW Bronzed flesh, GW flesh wash then highlight with Bronzed flesh and then old Bronzed flesh or Bleached bone as it became.

For the Chinese I switched to:

GW Bronzed flesh, GW flesh wash then highlight with Bronzed flesh and thn Foundry's medium flesh 5B.

Results can be seen here, the chap at the front, bottom left with yellow trousers was my tester piece painted normally, everyone else is done the 'Chinese' way.

link

People are asian, rugs are oriental...just so you know.

My bad Iron Ivan Keith......old paradigm. Tom (Condottiere) thanks so much for that link. Excellent stuff. Matakishi, good looking figures...thanks for sharing.

Dave

Well, yes. For many years I was an Oriental then, poof! I am Asian. Now, to the subject at hand. Looking in a mirror, I am rather brown. Keep in mind that most asian men in the military will be brown due to the weather and sun. It is true that women who are more urban will be very pale and even, due to the translucent skin, sometimes a bit yellow. If you vacation in Hawaii most of the people there are asian and they are all very brown. In my opinion bronzed flesh will do just fine.

I have found that GW Tanned Flesh to be a good base to work from (I used it on my woodlands Indians, lightening it up a bit with GW Dwarf flesh, it gave a good warm skin tone). Add other tones to change it up a bit.

Venatus: no problem man, just joshing ya. I was told the same thing a couple of months ago.

Keith "plain 'ol white cracker dude".

Iron:

Maybe I take things to literally, but to me Asia is an entire continent that includes Caucasians, Semitics and what we would really call "easterners" (in Latin "oriental").

"Oriental" seems to be more specific than just "Asian". Otherwise, it would be the same as some who think that U.S. citizens are the only Americans on the planet, when there are so many countries that make up the two American continents and their islands.

For this discussion, I think even "Oriental" was too vague. That is why I asked what specific ethnicity or nationality, since skin tones vary so much in eastern Asia.

I've taken to making custom skin colors for my minis. It's actually pretty simple... White + Raw Sienna + Burnt Sienna = Human Flesh. Vary the mix to get different results. For Oriental tones, I'd suggest using more Raw Sienna, possibly with some Raw Umber to give it more of a brown tone as seems appropriate. Southeast Asians, especially, can tan to an almost African shade of dark brown, so possibly some Burnt Umber with a bit of Black could help achieve that shade. Acquiring some copes of National Geographic, or watching some asian movies, could help you decide what you're shooting for in terms of skin color.

Whoa, I was just fooling around here...lets not take this too serious please, or it will end up on the CA board.

Look, I was kidding around, sort of making fun of the PC way that people get categorized constantly. I was once corrected that it was "Asian" not "Oriental" as the correct usage. I was told that Oriental is descriptive of a material object (like rug), while Asian was a term for people...so I was just going off what that person told me, and I could (and apparentrly am) wrong. Really...I don't care either way. Let people be called whatever the heck they want to be.

I don't want to offend anyone...

Sorry to all for derailing this topic.

:-)

Iron:

I never took it as a purposeful attempt to create controversy. You made, what appeared to me, an objection to Venatus' use of the term "Oriental". And I simply explained why I thought Venatus was partially correct, though more specific information was apparently needed on ethnicity.

No harm done. No need to apologize. You should be able to voice an objection if what you see seems objectionable to you. However, we will always want to know your basis. It is always good to know what other people think and why.

Like my nephew says, "we're cool".

I usually underpaint with either Vallejo Yellow Ochre or Brown Ochre, then layer my normal fleshtone sequences over this base. If the subsequent layers are thin enough, it allows the base color to tint the flesh tones slightly. Very similar in practice to underpainting Meditteranean types with olive green before working with the fleshtones.

For gaming purposes I would go for a caucasian skintone. The difference is just to small to be worth translating in paint. Matakishi's guys look very nice.

I live near New York's Chinatown and spent 3 weeks in China 7 years back. Skin color seems about the same as Caucasian, despite the "yellow" tag. The difference is in facial features like eyes and cheekbones, something not too noticeable in figures smaller than 25mm.

If you're painting me then darken it some. I'm blended, not a single malt.

My lazy technique - which should work fine for pulp villains is:

Basecoat in Delta Ceramcoat Pigskin

Heavy GW Fleshwash Wash

Drybrush with the Pigskin again

I do not mean to convey any insult towards Asians with my pick of pigments - I didn't make the name up. Besides, my Chinese co-workers all think the pig is a beautiful animal. They also believe that Winnie the Pooh is a pig, but that's another story.

Vallejo Cork.

"Oriental" and "Asian" both simply mean "Eastern" - from an "Occidental," "European," "Western" perspective, of course! The term "Oriental" has recently come to be considered as derogatory, so "Asian" is generally preferred.