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I do fleshtones in two phases, first airbrushing in the basic flesh colors and then use oil paints to fix up.

A. Mixing flesh tones - I mix 3 different colors for fleshtones: basic, highlights and shadows. With artist acrylics, the David Fisher formula is burnt sienna, raw sienna and titanium white, about 1:2:4 in his video. I found his mixture too red and dark, and 1:3:6 is about right for figures of real people but still too dark for anime figures. I use this mixture for doing shadows for anime figures. For anime basic flesh tone I mix apricot (a pinkish fleshtone), white and yellow ochre, approximately 1:4:1, if the mixture is too pink cadmium yellow medium is added. For highlights, more white and a little bit of cadmium yellow medium is added to the mixture. Note that these ratio are not accurate, I always mess up during mixing and just eyeball the mixture until I think I've got it.
With model paints such as Mr.Color (which I'm experimenting nowadays because the peeling problem of artist acrylic is driving me nuts), I mix red, yellow, white and blue, about 1:3:7:0.03 :) Blue is very tricky to add; if you don't add it your fleshtone will be too vibrant and looks unreal, too much... you get a mutant. I think green may be a better replacement for blue since it may be easier to control. For shadows brown and more blue are added to the mixture, for highlights more whites. I recommend Mr. base white 1000 for whites if you're using Gunze Sangyo's line of colors, otherwise you'll be running out of $$$ buying just the white paint because normal whites doesn't cover well. Mr. Base white is much more opaque and they come in a large jar and don't cost a lot more.

It's also very important that you mix & paint skin tone in broad daylight. Under artificial lighting, the mixture will come out with a wrong color (even with color-corrected lightbulbs), and your shading will be off because artificial light sources tends to cause less contrast than it actually is.

Disclaimer: Actually I suck at mixing colors so this is just for reference only. It really helps if you get a picture of the skin tone you want and mix according to it. Also I have different fleshtones for my figures at different times, and I'm still experimenting with various mixtures.

[Update 1/01] Nowadays I'm using Gunze yellow orange (#58) and red(#3) and sky blue(#14?) and Mr. Base white to mix the flesh. The exact ratio again is eyeball, a start would be 8:1:1:a whole lot, but it depends on what you want to achieve. I tend to use a redder/pinker flesh for anime characters and a darker/bluer mixture for life subjects. Gunze's red is very strong so it should be added very carefully. I actually mix big pots of flesh tones by adding colors to a jar of Mr. Base White. For the shadow color I mix to the original flesh pot Earth (#?), which is very close to burnt sienna, and red brown (#?) and more yellow orange to cancel out the red.

B. Airbrushing - using the basic flesh tone I airbrush in all areas, more colors for shadow areas and less for highlights. Then grab the shadow flesh tone and airbrush in the shadow areas. Then I lightly mist the basic flesh tone over the shadow to blend in the shadow colors. I only do this when I think the shadow looks too dark and out of place. Then airbrush in highlight fleshtone for the highlights. It helps to locate these areas if you study pictures of people ("hey man, it's 10 am and you're already reading babe magazines!" "I'm only studying flesh tones, leave me alone!"), and know the stop-sign rule (from Shep Paine's scale figure book) of how lighting interacts with colors. Also I mess up all the time and doing flesh tone is an iterative process for me. Finally, I've heard good things about Badger freak-flex premixed flesh colors but haven't tried it, you can read more about it from Jerry's page.

[Update 1/01] Now I use a slightly different approach. The problem with the method above is if you screw up (which happens to me often), fixing is not trivial because you cannot cover up your mistake. When you airbrush, the underlying color will show through the top color giving a sense of transparency. But to re-achieve this effect after a screw up tends to be very difficult. So what I do now is to airbursh the base flesh tone all over and make sure it uniformlly and opaquely covers the entire kit. This way, when you screwed up you can wipe out the mistake with the basic fleshtone and redo the area. Then I do the shadows and highlights as usual. I use very thin paints for shadows and highlights so that I can achieve a lot of gradation. Low pressure (~5psi) and thin paint allows you to draw very fine lines. I also generate more contrast than needed at this point. Finally I bind all the colors together. At this point you can decide whether you want a light or dark overall fleshtone by misting a mixture of the basic and shadow fleshtone. I keep on misting until there are no drastic transitions in color on the kit, which I consider very important in female skin color.

C. Oil painting - artist oils are very slow drying (days) and are very workable, and I use them exclusively for doing the final fixes and touches for my flesh tones. I don't use them on large areas because they leave brush marks easily, so I try to do as good a job with the airbrush as possible. But I have hard time getting deep shadows and high highlights (which are crucial to the figure) to look natural on the figure, so I need oil to fix up these areas, as well as areas that I have trouble getting correct tones with just the airbrush (belly & navel area and collar bones are examples of such). Also I do blushes on the face with oil too, because I usually screw up on it.

Accessories: The brands I use are Rembrandt, Old Holland, Winsor Newton and Gamblin. I buy the highest quality available - they're expensive ($4-$11 depending on the color), but the lower quality paints can cause endless grief due to their less refined pigments (I know... I tried :) In addition, higher quality paints are not that much more expensive than the lower quality ones, and oil last a very long time and you only need a few. I usually use only titanium white (highlights), mars brown (shadow), naples yellow light (basic flesh tone), burnt umber (deep shadow), yellow ochre (mix with shadow colors to "smooth" out the color), napol red (blushes, "bodily red areas"... let's leave it at that :)
You also need good brushes; they're expensive though so you need to care for them, but they'll last much longer. I use a few red sable brushes - the Series 7 Klonsky brushes are highly recommended by many artists - a 00, 0 and 1 pointed, a few 1 & 2's flat and a 3 (?) blender. I also like "filbert" brushes which has round edges. They're very nice for blending.
Mixing: I use naples yellow light as the basic flesh tone, mix in titanium white for high highlights and mars brown for deep shadows. I also sometimes use burnt umber in place of mars brown for very natural shadows. For blushes a mixture of red, white and naples yellow light is used; some mars brown are added for a deeper red.
Working with oil: I usually just use the oil straight out of the tube without mixing anything, but sometimes I mix in a drying medium called Liquin for faster drying (the oil is pretty dry after 6 hours with Liquin). You don't need to squeeze out a lot of oil form the tube - a little goes a loooooooong way.
I lay in the colors with some random brush and then spred them out like butter with a flat brush. Then blend the oil around the edges with another flat brush, or a "blender" brush. If you're unhappy with the result, you can wipe the lot out with either a brush or some thinner (I use odorless mineral spirits & turpenoid). When you blend your brush have to be clean & dry, keep wiping your brush clean with a tissue. I mess around with oil until I get something I like (or when I'm exhausted and lost interest in the kit :)

D. References: Shep Paine's Kalmbach book on how to make scale model figures is great, I learnt most of my techniques from it, and made my own modifications. I was interested in using oil from reading Gremlin's how-to article on oils.

I think I spent a lot more time doing flesh tones than other people, but hey, painting flesh is really the only reason I got into the hobby in the first place :D




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