People come in all shapes, sizes, and colors and the warriors of the Mortal Realms/41st millennium are no different. In this article, we’ll cover the basics of human skin in a variety of different shades, including the principles behind color and different techniques for giving flesh to your tabletop warriors. Note that in this article, we’re only covering regular, bog standard human skin, and any races that have similar skin, such as Aelves, Aeldari, Dwarves, Squats, Scrunts, and whatever else. If you are a transhuman/magic space elf/extragalactic existential horror you can do pretty much whatever you want, but rest assured that we’ll be covering more fantastical races in future installments of How to Paint Everything. Why bother? I've had contrast colours work just fine on corax white and as far as I know the primers of other companies are already smoother that gw's cw, which is where that issue comes from. Left: VMC Flat Earth mixed with VMA Medium Olive, highlighting to pure Flat Earth. Watered down Nuln Oil to emphasize scars and brand. T’au Empire – The T’au are an advanced and technologically sophisticated race that emphasizes ranged firepower and mobility. Their battlesuits and vehicles are often adorned with bright colors, and the pale blue-green skin of the T’au Fire Caste contrasts well with the warm tones of Guilliman Flesh. So far in my quest to build, paint and battle as many warbands as I can I have managed to assemble:

Also do you have a tip for an easy to achieve (i.e. contrast level of lazyness) piggy/salmon pink? I've tried the lighter contrast pink, but even heavily thinned with contrast medium the tone is way to purple overall and in the recesses. With a wash of fuegan orange over that I've had moderate success. Maybe something over a fleshtone would be better.The second is light that hits the skin and bounces off, taking on the color of the actual surface of the skin. This is somewhat self explanatory, and the most similar to painting non skin-based objects. Dark hair, dark eyes, olive skin. Big variation here as you get the more yellowish East Asian skin with the more brownish-yellow skin of Mediterraneans and Latinos also fall within this group. My other thought is that with doing a double Zenithal, you might actually get better results using Citadel shades or Army Painter shades over it, for the simple fact that those shades are much weaker than Contrasts and the Zenithal will show up much, much better under them.

Coat D'Arms match the OLD citadel colours (pre-1992) so there might be some difference. Shining gold has the most noticeable difference, I put down a solid basecoat of the color I want the shadows to be. On anything bigger than a face, you will definitely need two thin coats. On a face you may be able to get away with one, but probably not. This shadow color doesn’t need to be either one of your paint colors. For a darker caucasian color, I might go with a basecoat of pure Khardic Flesh. For a lighter color, the base coat might have a pretty significant portion of Sand in it. The same two paints can do a variety of shades. The four models in the Chosen Axes represent four individual named characters from Fyreslayers lore: Fjul Grimnir, the leader and a legendary Runefather of the Volstarg Lodge; Tefk Flamebearer, a Vulkite Berserker and second in command of the Chosen Axes; and Vol Orrukbane and Mad Maegrim, both Vulkite Berserkers. Here's an example. This pig baggage carrier. The photos aren't the best, but it shows the pale, pinkish color I achieved with the Guilliman Flesh over the white undercoat. I'm trying to remember how much I diluted the Contrast but I know it was very, very thin. I added a lot of Contrast Medium to lighten the flesh color: Contrary to what many pots of paint would have you believe, there is no single “skin tone”. The reason for this is because human skin is a complex, multilayered structure and derives its colour as a sum of its components, much of which is constantly in flux in life. Skin is translucent and “skin colour” is largely a combination of the colours present within the skin – the pigment melanin, red of blood and yellow of fat. If you have had the misfortune of seeing a corpse, then you can observe the sallow cast that develops – the loss of blood from the skin on death leads to a loss of ‘red’, leaving the melanin and fat behind.Tamiya light gray primer spray (I think it's sold as simply "Tamiya Gray Fine Surface Primer" or something like that)