Painting elf flesh

Use a Liquitex Burnt Sienna tube acrylic watered down to the point where it has a milk like consistancy. Liquitex tube paints are used my most traditional painters for a good reason, you can do most everything with their paint. Spend some time watering down your paint, and experiment so that you notice when it goes from being runny paint to mostly water.

When the paint is at this consistency, spread it over your elf skin. (BTW, make sure it is undercoated white.) Just let this dry, and you're done. Do not apply too thickly or standing pools of paint will look bad. If you put on too little, it will look like you painted a solid coat of paint. If the edges are too drastic, use less water. If its too dark, use more. It takes a few figures to practice with, but once you get the hang of it you will do well.

Once the skin tones are done, paint in any other features necessary. Sometimes you might want to darken a few areas where more contrast is necessary - around the eyes, between the lips, edges of a helmet, but normally nothing more than the wash is necessary.

Unfortunately most people do not use the good stuff. Similar Citadel colors, I believe, would be Snakebite Leather. While I have not used this technique with bottled paints, I have friends who have. I know it can be done, but you must be careful because the same colors from different manufacturers will have varying degree of pigment saturation. Just remember, practice makes perfect.

This technique also works well for hair, ratty and weathered clothing, and fur. If you do any of these, you need to use a drastically different shade, as anything similar will look lose the sharp contrast you want to achieve. This leads me to me second method:

Not as fast but more realistic: Again with Liquitex colors, use raw sienna (much lighter brown than burnt above), and paint a smooth base coat. Mix some white with the burnt sienna then thin it until it goes on VERY smoothly. Use this to paint the highlights. The key here is using the watered highlight. It needs to be thick enough to cover in one pass, yet apply smooth and appear to match. Only highlight raised areas such as hands, arm muscles, fingers, noses, cheekbones, chins, and exposed thighs (for witch elves).

A note on the choice of colors here. Mixing white with any other color, despite what it seems, pastels the original hue. Before you start thinking about Miami Vice reruns, pastels are pale versions of original colors. Pastelling the lighter brown, when applied over the light brown, makes it look horribly pale. I've found through practice that a pastelled darker brown looks MUCH better.

Another note about choice of color: Most human flesh has red in it somewhere. If you want to use these techniques for humans just add the ever so slight touch of red to your browns. (Trust me, its not too much. A little makes a BIG difference.) However, on elves, I usually leave out the red. It makes them appear somewhat more fair skinned.

When choosing substitute hues of brown, try to get colors that are mostly pure brown. Bronzed, olive things, and similar shades have more red or yellow. Try to use as even a brown as you can.

Written by: Tony Edwards