It’s much like the purple in how I do my layers. The only difference is what I do between my mid-tone and highlight.
I’ve always found faces to be easy, and eyes really hard. For me faces are about highlighting the nose, cheeks, lips, eyelids. They eyes on the other hand show me the mini’s soul, so are not just color theory.
The first three layers are just like my purple. Base coat color, leaving what black you want to keep. A Shade to take it to it’s darkest. Then a color one step up in brightness from the base color. The only thing strange I’m doing here is using the green based skin tone for the base color. I do it to make them feel a little more evil and sickly. I’ve found base skin tones that aren’t based on peach, really make something feel not human.
FACE LAYER 1: Base Face Color FACE LAYER 2: Shade FACE LAYER 3: Mid-Tone
Here’s where I do something different than the purple. I water down a red to a super thin consistency and then apply many thin layers over his cheeks, nose, and lips. How many layers all depends on how red you want it. Thin watery layers take awhile to dry and you might need to set it aside for a few minutes every few layers. One thing people who paint skin will tell you is that peach is not the only color in our skin. So adding this other color (red, purple, green) makes skin look much more real.
FACE LAYER 4: Reddening the Skin
With the red done, I apply the final highlight and do the eyes. I do the eyes in the highlight color an then just a black dot. The most important part about the eyes is making sure their not cross. The next thing you want is the black dot to be toward the upper part of the eye. After that, it’s dumb luck. But the nice thing is you can just paint over the black dot and keep redoing it until the black dot gods bless you with a eye position that brings your mini to life. A correction on the paint color below. I actually used Flayed One Flesh and not Screaming Skull (although I think they are close).
FACE LAYER 5: Highlight
Hope this has helped.
And in case you missed it. My Purple Tutorial is on the previous page.
Up up next for me. I’m thinking of doing him in green, I really like how it looks on Falters Army, and this guy’s got a new hat shape so might as well give it a new color.
Very nice tutorials for the purple and faces. It's always interesting to see other people's techniques. Thanks for sharing.
For the faces I tend to use red ink washes for the eye sockets and a small amount of purple wash on the nose and lips (army painter inks).
PM
Pappa Midnight
I'll have to try that Purple on the lips - I like how that sounds. I've always used red, but for CDs purple does make a lot more sense (it gives it a warm, but at the same time cold, feel).
Glorious work! Once again I love what you have done with the shields! such a subtle alteration and suddenly they are as Chaos Dwarf as big hats and curly beards :cheers
Thanks guys. I’m hoping to spend some more time with my CDs and finish off the last guy to make a complete unit of 10 axemen, and then on to blunderbusses - with maybe a side project having to do with a Rackham miniature being turned into a Bull Centaur.
