Monday 15 April 2013

Experimenting with Washes to paint different skin colours

Hello all,
So I realized there was something wrong with the assortment of Zombies I've painted so far for Zombicide. They were all of a Caucasian 'white' skin colour. Hence in order to satisfy the demography of the states, I really need to have some variance in skin colour.
I've never tried painting anything but pale skin (due to my historic armies based in the 10-15th centuries, and the general tendency of Skavens to have fur all over) so I've thought long and hard on how to go about this. And trust me, there are not many tutorials on this subject on the net.
So, to begin with I've tried with the different Washes I had available, most of which are from Lavado.

Painting ethinic skin black negro mexican zombies wash miniatures
The best results came from the Sepia, the Umber and the black washes. The Sepia is not that useful, but I think the umber might be representative of some ethnic groups, if used on a darker base coat. The dark wash on the other hand seems be a quick solution to the darkest 'African' skin tones.

Painting ethinic skin black negro mexican zombies wash miniatures
This is the result with two applications of the wash - although this might be too dark a tone to represent most modern 'african-americans'. I do think this works better than simply painting the skin black but I would appreciate comments and suggestions.
I will try a thinned down black wash with a thin layer of umber on top to get a better 'mixed' skin colour result.

All the best,
Kasper

3 comments:

  1. Hi Kasper, those look pretty good actually. You might try putting on a base coat for the flesh other than white, because it looks like you just primed white and washed. Also check out Atomic Floozy's blog specifically here. I have an ingrained white middle aged American fear of painting ethnic skin tones. I think her advice was helpful.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Sean - you must be the best commenter on the Internets :-).
    Yes, the washes were directly applied to a white basecoat (I've been using that frequently for clothes recently - easy and very satisfying way to paint), mainly as I would like to see if this was possible. I will try some on a suitable flesh colour (thanks for the link), and a combination of the washes soon. We fearful northerners must find a way to increase the diversity of our miniatures :-).
    All the best,
    Kasper

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aww shucks! Thanks Kasper, just trying to share info when I have it.

      Delete

You might also find this interesting:

Related Posts with Thumbnails