Hobby experience: Painting Faces

So, painting faces, one of the most intimidating aspects of model painting.

Tonight I’ll quickly go over my experience with faces as well a few tips that I have for anyone reading.

With faces generally most people will recommend starting with a dark or midtone and then highlight up to the final product.

For the most part this is a viable route however in my personal experience I’ve found the opposite to have better results.

Reference back to the thumbnail image- the top three faces were all done entirely with Kislev Flesh and Reikland Fleshshade. Basically:
Basecoat - Kislev Flesh
Wash - Reikland Fleshshade
Highlight - Kislev flesh

This is a very basic recipe however as you can see for yourself it is effective for a quick face for standard battleline models. Perfect for Sergeants or normal marines or whatever your infantry choice.

Now for something a bit more involved-

For things like characters you generally want to do something that looks good, something more detailed and with a bit more finess. Now my own recipes aren’t exact when it comes to my character faces as just using a copy-paste technique can get monotonous very quickly. So here are a few variants-

Basecoat - Kislev Flesh + Mephiston Red 1:1
Layer - Kislev Flesh
Glaze shade - Khorne Red, one layer
Glaze highlight - Kislev Flesh + White 1:1
Glaze - Mephiston Red, areas like the lips and any areas with bionics
For Tongues I like to use Khorne Red, simple one layer with a thin wash of Nuln Oil or similar black wash.

For a slightly more sandy skintone-

Basecoat - Kislev Flesh
Thinned Wash - Reikland Fleshshade
Highlight - Kislev Flesh + Screaming Skull 1:1
Thinned Wash - Seraphim Sepia
Glaze Highlight - Screaming Skull

For something a bit more cold and irritated-

Basecoat - Kislev Flesh + Khorne Red 1:1
Layer - Kislev Flesh, Khorne Red + White 1:1:1
Glaze highlight - Kislev Flesh + White 1:1, very thin applied to the most exposed areas

And that’s basically my recipes for the faces themselves.
However something about faces that intimidates people the most is eyes, and for good reason, they can make or break the face very easily.

Now if you want you can leave the eyes unpainted, I’ve actually done this a few times with squinted eyes. However if you want some advice on getting a decent eye:

What I generally do is paint the white of the eyes first, making sure to avoid spilling into other areas as much as I can. With this I pray and hope as I carefully dot the pupils (this WILL take practice).
Also something to take not of is you can be rough around the eyelids as you can generally paint over your mistakes in those areas.

Also be careful when adding eyebrows to faces. Its not something a lot of people notice but most models’ faces don’t have painted eyebrows as if done incorrectly it can look very cartoonish. All I can advise here is less is more, if you want to paint eyebrows at all.

But anyway I hope this helped, if there’s anything you’d like to see please leave a suggestion below.