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I've been painting for a while now and when I paint flesh its hit or miss. I have Vostroyans so I dont get a lot of practice .I generally do it pretty simple. Lately I do Dwarf flesh ,then devlan mud wash ,then dwarf again. I accidentally got red gore in my flesh for my Vostroyan. Not completely mixed in but stringing into the dwarf flesh it looked great. I did a Catachan demolition guy next same way w/o the red. Looks like crap. I'm thinking I washed it too heavy and it made it too hard to make out the lines. I washed his face badab black to make it look like he black camo'd his face cos it looked like crap. i'm lost. Any advice on flesh?!

Easy mode: Dheneb Stone, followed by a wash of Ogryn Flesh.

Really

Flesh color scheme is always been a topic of many arguments by many painters for the reason of you can do it in many different ways.

The basic and the way I do mine is this:

-Dark Flesh as a base
-Dark Flesh and Dwarf Flesh (1:1 ratio)
-Dwarf Flesh
-Ogryn Flesh Wash to bring the colors together
-Highlight with a mix of Dwarf Flesh and Elf Flesh.

Hope this helps

Really.

I've been experimenting with doing various Grey paints then Ogryn Flesh to do different shades of pale flesh. It works fantastic there.

Basically, depending on how pale/tan you want the flesh to be will affect what color you use as the base before the Ogryn Flesh wash.

For a pale, ethereal flesh: use Astronomicon Gray or Fortress Gray.
For the stereotypical Elf/Dwarf flesh tone: use Codex Gray.
For a standard Caucasian flesh tone for humans: use Kommando Khaki. For adding a bit of paleness(or even to make a more Asian/Russian fleshtone) to that, add in some Bleached Bone. To darken it up/ruddy it up, add Bestial Brown.
For an Arabic skintone, use Vermin Brown.
African is kind of a hard one to do well without making it look overly like a racist's rendition of a black person. Best suggestion is to use Dark Flesh, with Scorched Brown to darken it up further as you want.

Oh, and don't forget the Ogryn Flesh wash. Never wash flesh with Badab Black. It doesn't work so hot, and tends to look bad.
However...when doing things like Elves, Zombies, Mutants, etc adding in Blue/Purple/Green/Red washes make an otherwordly look and adds in some uniqueness to them.

Thanks

Same with me, I've tried a bunch of different methods with my marines, and they just don't turn out right.

Along with the eyes. I either get the "google-eyes" look or "possessed black eyes" look.

All helmets for me from now on.

Kanluwen - this sounds VERY interesting!

Any pics?

That's one example, if not a great photo, for Raven Guard.
It's Codex Gray washed with Ogryn Flesh, then highlighted with Kommando Khaki/Codex Gray in a 25/75 mix.

John,

The big thing with eyes is to remember that our pupils aren't really round when viewed from the front. I paint my eyes all black, then place a small white dot at each corner. Instant eyes. (Painting eyes II in the link). This is great for horses, and rank and file. For more detailed characters try the Painting eyes I in the link.

They also have some good flesh tutorials.

http://www.paintingclinic.com/MainClinic.dwt.htm

Here's a simple method that takes me no more than two minutes...



Painted this with a tallarn flesh basecoat, then an ogryn flesh wash. After that I add a 50/50 tallarn flesh/elf flesh mix (simply because I can't afford too many paints) to everything except for the recesses. I then do my fourth step, which is simply highlighting all raised areas with pure elf flesh. I do my eyes by wetting a brush, making a fine point, and colouring the eyes white and then adding two black pupils.

Alterantively for a more gaunt look, do exactly the same but replace the elf flesh with fortress grey or something similar in the 50/50 stage and do the final highlight with a mixture between grey and bleached bone/elf flesh:



When painting faces you also have to learn how to identify what is a recess (eye sockets, the creases on the side of the mouth, below the nose...) and what you should highlight (raised areas... eyebrows, nose tip, prominent cheeks, etc.)

Here's a useful link:
http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=99163

I use Reaper's Flesh triads in the Master Series and find them superb. Tanned, Rosy, Golden and other tones are all available and easily mixed and matched. No washes needed, which I find can make the skin look dirty - not necessarily a bad thing.

Reaper has a paint set with a guide for painting skin tones that's pretty nice too. Check it out.