Skin, faces, hair, eyes, and lips

How do I paint flesh?  How do I paint skin?  How do I paint faces?
I generally start with a dark version of what’s going to be my main skin tone.  After it’s dry, I begin again with the same base color, and add in a little of my main skin color.  I build up gradually to that color, keeping the shadows and hollow parts of the body darker: divots in muscles, folds of skin, and so on.

From there, I build up to an even lighter skin tone, concentrating on smaller and higher areas.  Finally, I highlight particularly prominent areas (muscle ridges, knuckles, etc) with the light flesh tone mixed with a really light highlight color.  Sometimes, to smooth transitions or darken the low-lying areas, I’ll wash with a mixture of the base color and the flesh tone.

So for a caucasian humanoid, I’d begin with a dark caucasian or chestnut color.  I’d gradually layer up to my medium caucasian, and mix that with a bit of ivory or light caucasian for the highlights.  I’d wash the eye sockets with a mixture of chestnut and the medium caucasian, then paint the eyes.
The main difference between skin in general and faces in particular is the extra attention to detail needed in painting faces -- they tend to be a focal point, so they've got to be treated with care.

How do I paint eyes?
Eyes are intimidating -- they’re usually tiny, but are a main focal point on the miniature.  I begin by washing the eye sockets in a darker shade of my main flesh color, as detailed above (and shown in the last picture in the face series).  Then I paint in the white of the eye using an ivory or light gray -- pure white generally looks too stark to use here.  I nearly always miss the eye (as below), so I clean up with the flesh tone and paint in the initial eyelids.

Carefully, using a small brush or the tip of a cat’s whisker, I paint in a dot for the pupil of each eye.  Tiny brushes, cat whiskers, toothpick splinters, and small thorns are all good for pupil-painting.  It’s important to get both pupils looking the same direction; in addition, I try and make the dot reach from the top to the bottom of the white to avoid an intense stare (unless a stare fits the character of the miniature).  Finally, I’ll add in a tiny bit of the main flesh color for a top eyelid and add a tiny white dot to the pupil.  I don’t always perform these final steps -- sometimes the miniature is too small and my hands are too unsteady -- but they add immeasurably to the character of the mini.
 

How do I paint lips?
The initial tendency (or my initial tendency, anyway) is to paint them red or pink.  But unless the figure is supposed to be wearing lipstick, this usually doesn't look too good.  :)  Instead, I take the middle flesh tone I'm using, and mix in a bit of brown, orange, dark purple, or burgundy, depending on the skin tone.

 
 

  How do I paint hair?
  This is another tough one.  For me, it sort of depends on the way the hair is sculpted.  For wild locks, I usually use more or less the same method as for fur (described elsewhere).  For smooth, combed, stylized hair, I use a series of damp drybrushes, moving the brush along the strands rather than across them, so as to keep the recesses dark..  Blond hair seems to look more realistic if I use a series of sandy yellow-browns rather than true yellows.  Likewise, red hair looks better with a series of deep red-browns and brown-oranges rather than true reds.

In the series of pictures above and below, I began with a dark blue/black mixture that almost doesn't show up in the scans.  I progressed upwards, blending in a little grey until I was working with a pure medium gray, gradually highlighting the more exposed areas and the edges of the hair.  For the final highlights, I mixed a bit of ivory.  Note that I completely forgot the eyebrows. . . at the end, I went back and painted them in using the same process.  I also painted the crown of thorns on the figure's head.

back to painting techniques
back to Minutiae main page

(revised 7 Nov 03)