"flesh tones" Topic

I live in the Northwest of England, the weather is notoriously damp and miserable! My Dad had light mousy hair and very blue eyes. (Celtic roots) He worked in the building trade, outside in all weathers. He had an all year tan and by the end of what passes for Summer here was a dark brown colour, sometimes he was asked if he'd just returned from a Mediterranean holiday!
This might be something to think about when you paint your Vikings, Germanics and Gauls!
I have exactly the same colouring as my late father but working indoors(I'm retired now) didn't have his tan. However, my wife and I had summer holidays in Greece and after two weeks I was the same colour as the local fishermen! This is something to think about when painting your Galatians and other Gallic mercenaries in the Mediterranian region.

This is something I always try to incorporate in my miniatures painting. Weather and sun exposure. I have my own experiences of how I tan during the spring and summer.

When on group holidays in Greece, a friend of mine, Geoff, who is the epitome of "Nordic blond" would tan a sort of greeny brown colour! truly "Olive skinned"

I have used lighter browns for flesh tones on my Saxons and WWII US Marines. Seems more realistic than "flesh".

If you use any sort of dark wash, you can achieve this effect with that. I use a craft paint, Sunflower, as my flesh color. I apply The Dip Technique -- Royal Walnut color (Minwax, Dark Brown), 90% of the time. My flesh bits on my mini's vary, widely, in the end result, even though my Sunflower paint is pretty consistent, and I use a PVC pipe in my electric drill (Adam Savage's YouTube Spray Paint Mixer video -- incredible mixing results, very quickly!), to thoroughly mix my Minwax can, before opening it. No two faces are exactly alike, and they all pretty much have a brown tan. LOL! Cheers!

I did contemplate doing my naked Gauls with suntanned faces and hands, but pale bodies, arms and legs. I chickened out in the end, though.

I saw a photo recently of Union troops bathing in a river, their faces are dark brown but the bodies are very pale!

I did contemplate doing my naked Gauls with suntanned faces and hands, but pale bodies, arms and legs. I chickened out in the end, though.

I think either Livy or Polybius comments on naked Celts looking like that.

I thought of doing the same with Gauls.

"their bodies are white and fleshy as they never strip except in battle." Livy 38.27

The "tan line" thing just wouldn't look right, even if it would probably be authentic! There's also the "scale effect" I suppose the smaller the scale the lighter the skin tone is the general rule. Female flesh tones are a different thing. I think I'm correct in saying some women have less melanin than men so would be less tanned. I don't know if this is a general rule though. Minoan frescoes show tanned men but very pale women even though women are shown outdoors picking flowers etc; maybe just an artistic convention.

It is a general rule that women have less melanin than men.

Now obviously a black woman is likely to be much darker than a white man, but among people of a given racial background, women do tend to have lighter skin.

Minoan (and perhaps more famously Egyptian) art exaggerates the difference, but there's a biological basis for it.

I remember a story about Churchill visiting the troops in North Africa. He and some staff went down to the Med for a quick swim, realizing to late that they had no proper swim wear, they went "commando". Churchill saw a large group of soldiers a ways away down the shore and asked why they had swim trunks on. Upon further and closer examination it was discovered that they, in fact, did not have any swim trunks after all. Thats what a few weeks in the North African sun can do to you.