Tips for painting skin?

[Deep Six]

Hello everyone.

I have recently returned to the hobby after a break due to life reasons, and I've picked up Shadespire to get back into painting.

Currently started painting dwarves (Chosen Axes) but after painting them, I've stripped the paint off due to not being happy with how the skin turned out.

 

I followed the Games Workshop tutorial on painting them and everything looks great except for the skin. The skin done by how GW suggests in their videos seem too 'cartoony' for me. The layers between the skin don't seem to blend well.

 

Most of their videos seem to just go with the: 

Bugman's Glow -> Cadian Fleshtone -> Reikland Fleshshade -> Kislev Flesh highlight route.

 

But the result is too distinct between the layers of skin and the highlights don't seem right / natural.

The GW tutorials on YouTube for painting skin/muscle seem to all have the same end result.

(Link for example:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f87PyCCl0PY)

 

Would anyone happen to be able to give me some tips or personal formulas on how to paint skin (without airbrush ) to make the 'blending' look more natural?

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks everyone

[syph0n]

Thinner paint can help on the layers, as it tends to be a bit more transparent. 

Of course the other way is to use mixes between the key layers. So you'd go 50/50 Bugman's / Cadian before Cadian. You just need to keep the paint thin. This does lengthen painting times. 

Another thing to do is to use a much thinner wash with Lahmian Medium, which I guess you'd call a glaze. 

I tend to do a bit of both of the above, but with blues for my dark aelves. 

[Tommy]

A single base colour with one or more washes can give a really good tabletop effect (without blending issues) if you're not going for a higher standard than that, a common choice being simply corax white primer with thinned (so it settles in the recesses better) reikland fleshshade on top.

If you'd rather something sallower for your dwarfs there should be plenty of simple variations on that approach that get you there, e.g. three or four coats of fleshshade on white instead of just one can really darken things down.

I've recently taken to trying things out on old test models before settling on a scheme and it's helped a lot with this stuff, really quick to do when you don't care about neatness and you find yourself much freer to experiment when there's no pressure to get it right first time!

[Redking]

I tend to apply the layers in very thin coats.  Bugman’s, then Riekland, then a thin layer of Cadian.  I then paint the eyes and use a thin selective wash of Riekland.  I finish off with thin layers of Kislev until I’m happy.