Painting Skin and a Couple of Scavvies

 Last post, Lasgunpacker asked for any tips on painting skin. To be honest, I find this quite hard, and it's not something I enjoy much, especially where you've got big open expanses of skin, as with ogres or trolls. So, here's what I know about painting Caucasian, ie white, ie pink skin.

I start with a layer or two of Army Painter Tanned Flesh, which is a dark flesh, not-quite-terracotta colour. Then I'd put a wash of shade of (usually) Strong Tone, or much-thinned chestnut ink. I think the chestnut looks slightly more wholesome, but both are basically suitable for healthy flesh. For iller flesh, or big expanses, I might also wash with a bit of very thinned down purple. Occasionally, I might even put little washes of a thinned-down drab military green on raised points of the flesh, partly to "calm down" the highlights and partly to suggest unhealthiness. I'd use something like Model Color Russian Uniform Green for this. As with all these things, approach cautiously and don't go nuts. 

Then, as per standard with these things, I'd re-paint Tanned Flesh over the bits of the skin that aren't especially shadowed. I would then add increasing amounts of Model Color Rosa Salmon for highlights.  You could use a bone colour to highlight, but I don't think it works quite as well. Obviously, you have to be more careful with large, smooth areas than you would with small faces with a lot of ridges, so that the change in colours remains fairly smooth. Eventually, you're working up to a pretty light pink (but not an electric one, obviously). You can use this to represent knuckles and joints on the model's hands as well as lines on the face.

I never used to paint lips on male models, and used to see it as a sort of stylised way of showing that a model was female. These days I think it depends on the miniature. I would mix a tiny bit of red into a 50/50 mixture of Tanned Flesh and Rosa Salmon, and put it on the lower lip (but not the upper) of the miniature. Occasionally, I've used a similar mix to suggest age and/or drunkenness on models' noses and cheeks. You can also use a very thin glaze of watered-down Carroburg Crimson for this. 

Anyhow, I painted a couple more weirdos for my gang of horrible Necromunda scavvies. I thought it would be fun to make one of each of the mutations in the Outlanders army list. 

The tall guy on his own represents the "spikes" mutation, which makes sense as he's got a lot of spikes. He is a Mantic plague zombie model, with a Mantic zombie head. The body was made out of that awful plastic-resin stuff that Mantic have used in the past, which somehow manages to hold sharp detail but not look very good. It took a while to scrape off the mold lines, and I'm sure I missed some bits.

The second model represents the "three arms" mutation, or possibly "two heads". I find some of the old metal scavvy miniatures a bit too cartoony, and thought that it would be better to split this model into two guys. I went for the classic combo of a small devious guy being carried by a big dim one.

The lower chap is a Mantic ork, with 40k ork arms and a Stargrave head. The upper chap is a Perry Miniatures Afghan, still on his little plastic base, with a Stargrave head and Frostgrave arms. I think they work quite well together, although it was hard to get a picture that actually shows what they are.

So, there we go. I've not painted much, but I'm working on a few things. Hopefully I'll have some full Bretonnian knights soon.