Pale skin

Hey all, I am finally painting a dark elf pirate warband and I wonder if anyone could give me any advice on how to nicely paint blue-ish - pale skin.
thanks in advance,
e.

I second that request. Plus, a list of the paints used and an example model if possible please.

Eliazar wrote:

Hey all, I am finally painting a dark elf pirate warband and I wonder if anyone could give me any advice on how to nicely paint blue-ish - pale skin.
thanks in advance,
e.

I would start with a basecoat of Shadow Grey and then highlight through Spacewolves Grey -> Fortress Gray -> mix of the aforementioned and either Bleached Bone or Elf Flesh, depending on wheter you'd want a "real" fleshy tone or just a pale blue-grey.

I've never tried it on Elves, but my normal recipe for Pale Skin is (using non-Citadel Paints): Dark Brown undercoat, Dark Flesh mid time, Highlight Flesh on top. The High contrast of dark to light causes unnatural looking shadows, like the skin has been bleached or sickly.

If you're going for blue, I've never tried it, but I suggest this: If you use non-citadel paints, find a Black Paint that has a TIIIINY bit of a blue tint to it (all blacks are just an uber-strong true color, like brown, green, or blue. Sometimes the true color doesn't show until you water it down.) Use that with water to apply a wash on the finished product.

I've got some seriously blue dark elves, and I started off with enchanted blue, (regal blue in the seriously dark places, but you don't want to be there ) then worked my way trough spacewolves grey, shadow grey and skull white

it's a really blue tone, but if you want slightly more fleshy, then you could apply a thin (THIN!) layer of elf flesh over all of it... that works for me on certain parts (do it with my goblins now and tattoos get a better look too, it looks just like a thin layer of flesh, with a weird underlaying colour)

Start with chardon Granite foundation paint, Higlight with Tallarn flesh mixed with a TINY touch of Necron Abyss. Work it up with denheb stone and a couple of very thin washes of necron abyss or asurman blue painted into the deepest recesses.

Here is an example - this one is more pale then blue but could easily be skewed further towards blue without making it smurf like

I'd say start with :
space wolves grey (50%) Chaos black (50%)(only in the DEEPEST parts)
Space wolves grey (pure)
Space wolves grey (50%) Bleached bone (50%)
Bleached bone (pure)
Skull white (only on the HIGHEST parts)

this will be a very greyish skin tone though. maybe blend some elf flesh through the first 4 steps. and, ALWAYS add SOME water to your paint, it really helps!

tkkultist wrote:

sorry for offtopic, but did you paint this? it's really good man!

That is a model of Alpharius that was entered into one of the Golden Daemons not long ago. A team entered a load of Primarchs. They were all pretty good, although I think this Alpharius was my favourite of the bunch.

thanks catferret! Yeah Team North america did these - my pics of my own piece here are terrible (every pic of this model is overlit) so Im going to reshoot it now that I got my new photo set up

StyrofoamKing wrote:

I've never tried it on Elves, but my normal recipe for Pale Skin is (using non-Citadel Paints): Dark Brown undercoat, Dark Flesh mid time, Highlight Flesh on top. The High contrast of dark to light causes unnatural looking shadows, like the skin has been bleached or sickly.

If you're going for blue, I've never tried it, but I suggest this: If you use non-citadel paints, find a Black Paint that has a TIIIINY bit of a blue tint to it (all blacks are just an uber-strong true color, like brown, green, or blue. Sometimes the true color doesn't show until you water it down.) Use that with water to apply a wash on the finished product.

I dont know why I forgot about this too - Reaper makes a blueblack lliner paint - it is pretty much a thin blueblack which is used tor detail touches, shadowing etc. Great colour for what styrofoamking is talking about - I will try and find my bottle of it tonight to get a stock number for you if you like.