Need help painting pale skin (Human scum)

[Rilian1]

I'm a Tyranid fan, and despise the puny humans, but every now and then I enjoy painting one. I picked up Abaddon a week ago, just for fun, as I really like the character/model. His armor came out fine, just lots of black and gold. I'm now at the point where I need to paint his ugly face. I've done up a few marines before, but they have a typical warm, light, caucasian skin tone. I need something paler and more "vampiric" for his face, as he's well over 10,000 years old.

If anyone has a good method for painting pale skin, please post it here. I'm looking for a corpselike whitish greyish scheme.

Bonus WIP pics:

Ignore the base, it's not permanent.

[zark]

I'd sugest maybe a grey base with a couple of watered down skull white washes till you get the desired effect. Dont know what grey to use, never used it before

[math]

Or even Rottenflesh, I'm sure GW still do that colour, and maybe just a hint of red to give it some life. Especialy around the eyes.

[lowlygaunt]

I have the rotted flesh color. It could work great as a base, and then cover it with layers of watered down white or grey. One secret to painting super pale flesh is to get the veins and such to show thru. Paint on some bluish veins, very tiny, and some reddish spot, and then cover with watered down white/flesh, so that they can be seen "thru" the flesh. Of course, if he is a vampire blood in his veins may be a moot point.

[Devil's Advocate]

the thing about pale skin is you need to decide what tint it will have first. that determines your base colors (and the rest of it)

if you want a bloodless pale blue skin, start with grey, throw in a wash of ice blue, then add in light touches of white and grey

you could want a fairly pale pinkish skin, in which case you can go for the pink base coat and up through white.

going with rotting flesh will give you an interesting yellow-green tint.

[Rilian1]

Well I finished him last night, took pics today:




The skin came out...different. I think it works though. I'm probably going to touch up his eyes - they were a pain, and way harder than any other Marine I've done so far.

As always, please let me know what you think!

[zark]

That looks good, love the volcanic base. Any chance on some close up pics of Drach'nyen?(The sword)

[wolffang]

you could try using flesh colour mixed with a very light blue.

[krakenfiend]

wolffang said:

you could try using flesh colour mixed with a very light blue.

Yep...that is what I do for really fair skinned models. Just remember that you need REALLY thin coats of paint to build the highlights properly...slow is fast for doing human skin.

krakenfiend

[nuklearangel]

Very nice base there mate, and good job all round on Abaddon. Just fix the eye and he'll be splendid!

[n00b1n8R]

IMO, everything is awesome except the skin (probably not the best model to begin painting flesh on D: ) and the nid skull (I would have liked to have seen the carapace left in a recognisable scheme).

really love that base btw!

[Rilian1]

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I appreciate it!

I had thought about keeping the 'nid carapace proper colors on the skull, but would that mean the whole skull is that color? I'm not too familiar with how an endo/exo-skeletal structure would work.

His trim also came out way more brassy than I had originally intended. It was supposed to be a tarnished gold look.

And everyone seems to love the base. I thought it would look neat, but I didn't realize it was all that novel! Um...now taking commissions for lava bases? Is there even a market for that sort of thing?

[n00b1n8R]

protip: it's fiction, do what you want

tbh, I like the overly brassy look. it's a nice change to the plain gold trip.

how did you do the lava bases anyways (if you feel like sharing the secrets :3 )

[wolffang]

the tyranid would keeps its natural colours due to its exo skeleton (just look at dead bugs... they stay same colours) so if the nid he killed had say.... bright pink "skin" and neon orange carapace (odd i know) it would still be those colours