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Hello Dakka Dakka:

I'm working on a Coven Throne for AOS and i'm having some issues with painting the faces of the vampire women. The women are fully assembled, but separate from the throne at this point. The faces are really small and often obscured by hair or other parts that make them impossible to drybrush effectively.

I want the pale, dead looking skin, but the details are getting lost in the faces. I've been attempting the following options:

black primer
Rakarth Flesh basecoat
reikland fleshshade wash
pallid wych flesh layer avoiding recesses

This tends to leave the details obscured as there are too many layers of paint and the shading disappears.

black primer
Rakarth Flesh basecoat
reikland fleshshade wash

This usually leaves the model looking dirty and the fleshshade settled unevenly, especially in the eyes and cleavage. Also, the skin has a lot of color.


black primer
Rakarth Flesh basecoat
watered down nuln oil

Best so far, but the details aren't that crisp and I'm going to have to try and pick out teeth and the eyes so it isn't too flat.

Normally, I use rakarth flesh basecoat, fleshshade, and drybrush pallid wych flesh, which is fine for someone like manfred with an exposed head. But I can't get that to work for these smaller faces hidden by hair.

Any advice? Am I not thinning the paints enough (one drop of water for each small glob of paint)? How do you deal with tiny details that tend to disappear over multiple paint layers and can't be drybrushed?

Vampires tend to have fair features, so it probably isn't working because you are trying to create a contrast that isn't natural. I'd probably base coat then highlight as you are doing, then apply a thin wash of reikland with a couple of drops of lahmian medium and a drop or two of guillman blue to cool down the colour. That will create a more natural and suitable shading.

I use a simple method of Ulthuan Grey shaded with a 40/60 mix of Drakenhoff Nightshade/lahmian medium highlighted with Ulthuan Grey.