Episode 5: The Gang Shares a Recipe for Painting Man-flesh

First 10 Slaves join the Venom Tribe

I had a couple of messages about the initial slaves painted up last week with a number of people wanting to know the recipe. I certainly don't attest to be any kind of expert but I really appreciated the interest and am always happy to share. There are a million different techniques for painting humanoid skin so this is by no means a golden bullet, simply a way I have developed which results in a finish I am pleased with.

Firstly, I'd say this is less a "paint recipe" and more a process guide. There are only 5 paints involved:

1. Scalecolor Basic Flesh
2. Scalecolor Light Flesh
3. Scalecolor Indian Shadow
4. Dark Star French Sepia
5. Vallejo Ivory

Step 1.

Models are primed to create natural volume and shadow. This is really easy and can be done with spray primers or an airbrush.

Zenithal Priming

 Step 2.

Apply a fairly thin layer of Basic Flesh. Keeping the paint the consistency of skimmed milk allows you to build up colour filtering layers and maintains the shadow areas created by the primer

Scale Color - Basic Flesh

 Step 3.

This is essentially the most important step.  I added Scalecolor Indian Shadow to my palette and mixed with Basic Flesh and 2 parts water. This creates a very thin glaze which I painted in several layers deepening the shadows and creating a nice blend to the mid-tones. This glaze was applied 6-7 times.

Scalecolor Basic Flesh+ Indian Shadow

 Step 4.

With the main glaze applied I then deepened the strong areas of shadow with Indian Shadow. I painted water only onto some areas and then we blended the Indian Shadow into it for a smoother transition.

Glaze and Glaze

Deeper Shadows 

Step 5. 

I darkened the shadow areas further and approximated black-lining on recesses and nappies etc using Dark Star French Sepia. Dark Star is fantastic as it dries to a matte finish the same as the Scalecolor range.

Deeper Still

Step 6. 

With the shadows complete I then start working the highlights back up using Scalecolor Light Skin. Essentially the same process with thin layers as previously.

Bringing back up lights - Scalecolor Light Skin

Step 7.

The final highlights are applied with a mix of Light Skin and Vallejo Ivory. It is incredibly rare for me to use a pure white in anything and I always use Vallejo Ivory as a go to for creating lighter shades and highlight colours.

Scalecolor Light Skin and Vallejo Ivory

Step 8. 

And there we have it, add any spot highlights using Vallejo Ivory and done. This process can be as quick or slow as you like, it simply depends on how many layers of glazing you are prepared to do. As these guys are 4.5 point slaves I didn't spend that long on each stage.

5 Steps to Man-flesh heaven