Painting Tip - Washing Flesh

First, let me welcome all the new guys from the Wargamers Consortium group. If you are curious why I am posting every day, here's my first post of the year.

I love washes, but lately I've found that my painting abilities have matured passed the need to use them for their more basic effects. However, Privateer Press recently introduced me to a more advanced and effective way of using them.

When I was doing a recent Cygnar commission, I decided to see if/how they recommended doing flesh. As I read through their steps, my eyebrows rose in doubt. They suggested basecoating with the flesh, then doing a wash of flesh mixed with red, followed by a flesh mixed with green. My knowledge in color theory is rudimentary, but I couldn't fathom how that could end up not looking like vomit.

I bow to the knowledge of greater painters, because the resulting shading was fantastic. For cloth and armor that's not as big of a deal, but something translucent like skin needs more than just a darkening of the same color. The red and green aren't immediately apparent, but the mixing of the transparent colors on top of the skin tone is very convincing.

Today I started painting some Cryx Thralls using the Cryx faction book and decided to show you what I mean. I started off by airbrushing everyone with Thrall Flesh.

It's convincing for undead flesh, but two layers of washes will work miracles. The first wash was a drop of Beaten Purple and a drop of Matte Medium. I thinned this heavily with water; I lost count on the exact numbers, but it was around 15-20 by the time I was finally happy with it. I then put a light layer on everything, allowing the purple to just tint the skin and pushing any pigment buildups in to the deeper areas.

Finally, I made a 1:1:10 wash of Battledress Green: Matte Medium: Water and did the same thing on top of the purple. The end result made the flesh return to a more natural looking color (for as natural as undead flesh gets), removing the solid color from step 1 and replacing it with some color variations you barely notice, but do a lot to improve the overall color. In addition, the more obvious purple in the shadows provide a more convincing feeling of "yuck" than if I had just used a darkened Thrall Flesh.

I still have a long way to go before I understand why seemingly unrelated colors work so well together, but in the mean time I'll be content to love the results. So if you've been stuck in a rut regarding washes, try this out on flesh. Just make sure you get them very well thinned, otherwise you risk dyeing the model and removing the primary flesh color.

See you tomorrow! And if you haven't yet, make sure you click here to enter my giveaway for a set of Warmachine/Hordes faction dice!