Tutorial: Skin Tones – Method 1

The Daily Head seems to have been rather successful on twitter and so I have decided to share how I am doing the skintone practice with others. This is the method I learned at Seige Studios on their course. I have others I want to try out as well, but seeing how I have already got a few heads base coated, I wanted to stick with this way until I need to make some more.

Step 1: Base Coat.

I airbrushed the bases of all the heads starting with Cadian flesh, moving on to Kislev flesh and then a final highlight of Flayed One Flesh

Step 2:

Wash the entire head with a very watered down Seraphim Sepia.

Step 3:

Recess shade all the recesses with neat Seraphim Sepia.

Step 4

Recess shade two thirds of the recesses with Agrax Earthshade – not watered down/thinned.

Step 5:

Recess shade one third of the recesses – started from the nose/centre of the face, with Nuln Oil.

Step 6:

Black out everything that is not the face – this will stop the mind getting confused while you focus on the face. We are trained to know faces from birth, so keeping the face upright will also really help with this. Also shade in the eyes! I use black 70.950 by model colour for this as it is a nice matt black, but Abaddon Black will also suffice.

Step 7:

I have a special brush for eyes. It’s a fine detail brush with the point cut off to make it flat – this makes excellent dots without the point slipping and creating a mess. Use this amazing dot brush to place a dot at the two sides of each eye, as shown. Most of the time, this gets rid of the boogly eye that you get when you dot the black in the middle.

Also, highlight the ‘T Zones’ of the face with thinned down Kislev flesh. If you want a paler look, Flayed One Flesh would work here too.

Here is my progress so far. I know my brush control has improved from the first one. Things can only get better from here too. Just keep practicing!