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Was wondering if anyone knew any tricks to getting a convincing-looking Japanese skin tone for miniatures using Citadel Paints. Any help on this would be incredibly and very appreciated.

Japanese people's skin tone is not noticably different from white caucasian, and is about as diverse. What particular skin colour are you going for?

Check this out. Favourite it, as you will want to look at this again and again - it's GOLD.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1310

That's a fantastic article.

Ain't it just?!

I have some japanese looking dudes in my IG army. I painted bleached bone and washed lightly with gryphonne sepia.

Tek wrote:Check this out. Favourite it, as you will want to look at this again and again - it's GOLD.

http://www.coolminiornot.com/articles/1310

Not wanting to sound negative, I'm sure the writer of that article put a lot of work into it.

Unfortunately however many of the photos he uses as samples have incorrect colour balancing in first place, or are over-exposed, or have poor lighting. This makes them somewhat pointless as references.

Consider the following image...



Here we have the same photo with different colour balancing. Obviously the skin tones are different too. If you were to ask which one looks most like the original? The answer would be somewhat subjective. To be honest neither of them are going to be exactly like reality. On top of that the girl is probably wearing make up, so even in person she doesn't look like reality. In the end you just pick the one that you think looks best.

This does raise an awkward dilemma if you going to use the photo for a reference. Standing between you and the girl's real skin tone: We have to colours that Max-Factor and the make up artist picked, we have the colours that the camera picked with its crazy machine brain, and then we have the colours that the retouch artist picked. Ultimately you end up with something that is so far removed from reality, that you might as well just make the colours up yourself from ones you like.

This is why (one of the many reasons why) art teachers encourage their students to use real life references instead of photos.

On topic: If you are looking for a nice easy tanned or bronzed skin tone, it might be worth mixing a little Gold or Bronze into your flesh tone .

SgtSixkilla wrote:I have some japanese looking dudes in my IG army. I painted bleached bone and washed lightly with gryphonne sepia.

Do you have any pictures of these Guardsman? Would love to see them.

At this point I'd even considering getting some Reaper Paints just to get the skin tone right. I'm looking for something that's fairly modern day Japan, so fair skin but not quite Caucasian.

Favourited that article! Thanks Tek!

Dneb stone base should sort you out .

The real problem with painting accurate skintones is that the color of a person's skin is rarely the reason why we identify them with belonging to a particular race. A lof of it has to do with underlying bone structure as well as distinctive soft tissue features. So, in my opinion, the first crucial step is picking a sculpt that can reasonably be assumed to match the ethnic type you wish to paint.