By Chris Middleton

The basics of painting flesh are much like any other part of your mini. You shade the dark creases and highlight the flat surfaces or raised areas. The hard part is finding what combinations of colours work well. The eyes and lips can be a little tricky so lets talk about them first.

Eyes: I have found 2 ways that both work for me. Which one I use depends on the mini and circumstances. The first method I use on dark or bronzed coloured flesh. Before painting any flesh I paint the eyes and surrounding area black. Then I paint the flesh on the face leaving the eyes black but bringing the paint right up to the eyelids. After painting the flesh, the last thing I do is put a small dot of white in the center to represent the eyeball. Then with the smallest brush I have which is a 10/0 I put a even smaller dot of black in the center. This works well but if using a light skin tone, it is hard to cover the black and will leave a raccoon looking shadow effect on the face. The second method is for light skinned faces it works just as well but requires a steadier hand and best not done at 3:00 AM after 2 pots of coffee and a dozen cola's ( however the best looking mini's always seem to be the ones that get finished at that time ) Ok so paint the base colour on the entire face and highlight and shade it all to finished ( I finish the hair too ) Then when it has dried I mix up some black ink 50:50 with water take a small brush a 00 or 000 load the brush with the ink mix then gently touch it to a tissue to remove most of the ink from the brush. this is so you don't flood the area, but only apply a small amount of ink. After doing this dab a little ink into the eye sockets. if you get too much the easiest way to fix it is to very quickly dry your brush ( or grab a different one that is dry ) and use it to draw the excess ink out, leaving just a little behind to create the effect you want. Mostly you just want a black outline of the eye.( I also do the hair line with black ink on most mini's to leave a fine outline on black to show where the hairline is and make hair stand out ) After the ink has dried a white dot and even smaller black one and you are done. To make eyes different colours just substitute the colour you want for the white. the most important part is to hold the mini up and look at the face when you put the black dots on or you can end up with a mini that is cross eyed or one eye that is not inline with the other.

Lips: I always do these last. They are easy to do. Just add a little pink or red to the last highlight colour you applied, then carefully paint the lips. When that has dried, I use the same black ink to darken the seem between the lips. For mouths that are open I fill the mouth first with black ink, paint any teeth or tongue and then do lips.

Flesh: As I said before painting the flesh is just like painting any other part of your mini. You need to shade the low parts and highlight the raised area's. Sometimes I stand the mini on my desk and put my desk light right over it to help me find what areas I want to shade. The light will really show the shadows on the primer. the hardest part I found was what combinations of colours to use, so I will list the colours I have found work best for me.

ELF or PALE SKIN: This one is easy I paint the skin with Games Workshop (GW) elf flesh. I then mix some flesh wash ink 1 part ink to 5 parts water. I then coat the entire face with the ink allowing it to soak into the recess's and details. After the ink has dried, I thin out some elf flesh very thin and lightly start to cover the raised or highlighted areas. For the final step I will highlight it once more with a bit of white added to the elf flesh.

BRONZED FLESH: start with GW bronzed flesh base coat, mix ink 50:50 with water,1st highlight bronzed flesh thinned, 2nd highlight bronzed flesh mixed with some elf flesh, lastly elf flesh on it's own,

DARK FLESH: I use a mix of GW snake bite leather and bestial brown sometimes with a bit of black. Thrown in a wash with thinned black ink, highlight by adding a little GW bleached bone to the base colour to bring it up to where you want it.

RAW FLESH: start with elf flesh, add just a touch of GW Scab red, wash with very thin red ink, highlight with elf flesh on its own, adding white for more highlights.

WEIRD FLESH: you can do some weird blue or green pasty looking flesh or green for orks and goblins. the options are endless experiment with the colours and the try to wash and highlight the same as others. The possibility's are only limited by your imagination and colour palette.

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