A "New" Skintone Receipe

As happens frequently on my blog I can go off on tangents when working on something else. I have been working with my ScaleColor paints from Scale 75. However, I have found that they can be frustrating to work with at times. The regular line is just a bit thicker than a lot of other paints out there (including Vallejo Model Color) and thinning them properly can be vexing. When I have sat and worked with them exclusively for a while I find things coming together much better and their Fantasy Colors are much thinner and easier to work with.

One of the things that I have learned from Scale 75 is how to get a better variance in the skintones themselves (okay I knew this but I didn't really know how to put it in to practice). When you buy a set there is a little card in there with a couple examples on how to use their colors to achieve different effects. While the Spanish to English translation is poor (at best) they are usually simple enough to piece together what they are trying to say. It doesn't help that frequently the instructions are written from the point of view of someone using an airbrush. Its just impractical to use an airbrush to paint the face on a 25/28mm mini.

I decided that I would like to try and replicate the tones in the instructions with Reaper paints. Reaper makes up the bulk of my paints and I use them more frequently than any of the paints that I own. To match colors I went through an exercise that I have done before. On one sheet of paper I drew half inch squares with some space in between them. On another sheet I drew a much larger square and I cut the center out. The center being a 1/2"x1/2" square. The outer edges of these squares were painted with the flesh colors from Reaper and Scale75. I painted the different colors (and labeled them) on the 1/2" grid as well. With the center cut out I can slide the square with the color I'm trying to match with my smaller swatches of color. You can see a detailed example of this process in my post from June 9. 2014:Color Matching Brand to Brand

From this exercise I can see that Scale75's SC-22 Arabic Shadow is almost a dead ringer for 9220 Olive Shadow from Reaper. Using this method I was able to pick out 8 Reaper paints that are a pretty good match to the Scale75 Flesh set.

Here is the list:
SC-17 Pale Flesh  - 9048 Fair Highlight
SC-18 Light Skin  - 9234 Bright Skin Highlight
SC-19 Golden Skin - 9233 Bright Skin
SC-20 Basic Skin - 9044 Tanned Skin or 29822 Suntan Flesh
SC-21 Pink Flesh - 9140 Blushing Rose (I'll  have to find another equivelent for this if I run out of Blushing Rose, its a color that has been discontinued by Reaper).
SC-22 Arabic Shadow - 9220 Olive Shadow
SC-23 Indian Shadow - 29801 Crimson Red
SC-24 African Shadow - 9025 Burgandy Wine (probably with a drop of 9164 Dark Elf Skin to grey it down a bit)

I would then use these colors like this:
Base coat 1:1 Blushing Rose and Tanned Skin OR Suntan Flesh
Apply an overall highlight of 1:1 Tanned Skin OR Suntan Flesh and Bright Skin
Apply a shadow (working from underneath) of 1:1 Crimson Red and Blushing Rose
Apply a highlight of Bright Skin Highlight
Outline the eyes and the upper lip with 1:1 Crimson Red & Burgandy Wine
Apply a glaze to the cheeks of 1:1 Blushing Red and Crimson Red
Final highlight with 1:1 Bright Skin Highlight and Fair Highlight

The charts and some examples:

Color Swatches with product numbers and names. Don't forget this step!

You can see and maybe even be able to read some of my notes on the right

That's the Scalecolor colors on the top, everything else are Reaper Triads

Ultimately I will cut these out so I identified them on the back rather than the front.

The base coat of Blushing Rose + Tanned Skin

Here he is pretty much complete, probably still needs a few touchups

Competition Entries - The Next two Months

Since I seem to have reached a stalling point on the Steady Lads diorama I thought I would get started on some my other intended entries. There are four categories at ReaperCon; Painter (single miniatures), Open (conversions, scratch sculpts), Diorama/Vignette and Vehicles/Ordnance. My original thoughts were to have an entry in each category. I'm going to skip the Open category this year. I have made a couple of attempts at some major conversion work and I'm just not happy with them so I'm going to concentrate on the other categories. As it stands right now I'm planning two dioramas, two painters and one vehicle.

If you have been following my blog on a somewhat regular basis you have seen the work on the Steady Lads diorama. Its getting close so I'll probably stop posting anything related to that work as it reaches completion. The other diorama is intended to be a shadow box style piece titled Shopping II. It will feature the same three miniatures (well new ones) used for Shopping plus two additional pieces. This was a concept that I intended to enter a couple of years ago and didn't finish. I have scrapped the original concept and I'm working with new idea that I think will be easier to pull off.

The original shoppers from Hasslefree

The sellers also from Hasslefree

The two painter entries are: Big Game Hunter, and Terror From Outer Space. If things go as planned then these will actually appear to be vignettes as they will be presented on my display base concept I developed last year.

Big Game Hunter features a female alien from Reaper's Chronoscope Line

Terror From Outer Space features a pulp style female also from Reaper's Chronoscope line

I focused on working skin tones (its never ending) tonight. Principally on the Big Game Hunter. She is getting blue skin and I think purple or maybe pink hair. I have the skintones blocked in pretty good at this point so they just need some refining. I did finish her eyes and I'm very happy with those. Managed to get a nice orange dot in for the eye and a nice dark blue dot right in the center for the iris. I guess I still have some brush control. Not quite sure how I will proceed with the rest of her at this point. She has a very space barbarian look to her.

I'm trying out a new set of Scalecolor paints from Scale75 tonight. This is the Elven Fantasy Set which is primarily blue. These are much thinner than the historical color sets and I like them a lot. I feel like they go on quite a bit smoother and don't need nearly as much thinning. Like all the colors from Scale75 you to have to pierce the top in order to get paint out. I have another fantasy set and based on how well behaved the Elven set is I'm looking forward to using it.

The box art, front.

The box art, back

Like all their sets this once includes a guide on how to use the paints. The instructions are better than the ones in the historical sets but could still use some improvement.

And the paint line up. Note that the Fantasy colors are not only clearly labeled (with their own numbering sequence) but come with grey tops instead of black, making them pretty easy to pick out if you are just through them into a box

Another Off the Cuff Mini - Lovecraftian Painting Circle

With all the traveling lately and trying to have a piece done for Genghis Con I still managed to squeeze in a mini for the latest paint club on the Lead Adventurers forum. The current club is the Lovecraftian Painting Circle and the theme is creatures. I know this maybe hard to believe considering the amount of miniatures in my stash but I didn't have anything along these lines (although I'm seriously considering getting into some pulp). The numbers in the LPC were clocking up pretty quick there in the beginning but I decided to go ahead and order a Hound of Tindalos from Reaper anyway. I knew getting the mini wasn't going to be a problem it was finding time to paint. I finally sat down with some paint and brushes Sunday and got to work on this guy. 

There aren't a lot of descriptions of the Hound other than it seems to come from smoke so I tried to create that effect using a monochrome palette. I had the Black & White Scalecolor set from Scale 75 and decided to try that out. Its not precisely black and white there are some definite purple and brown tones in the colors (which is a good thing!). So, appropriately, this mini was more of an experiment than anything else. I banged it out in a couple of hours and while its not one of my best efforts it would certainly get the job done on the table.

This was the first time I worked with the Scalecolor paints exclusively on a mini. I discovered that you have to pay attention when thinning them down. While they come out of the bottle quite thick it doesn't take much to thin them down. I find myself over thinning them most of the time and really having to build up my colors again that probably worked in my favor in bringing out the different tones.

I would probably fail my insanity check if I met this guy on a dark night

New Paints - Scalecolor - First Impressions

First, just let me be clear that this is not a review, it really is just my first impressions of these paints. I have a number of friends that have started using these new paints from Scale 75. Right now they just come in sets of 8 colors. I imagine individual colors will be available soon, I can certainly see running out of some of these colors and not others. I started off with two sets the Flesh set because I paint a lot of skin and the Green set, well because I like green.

These are not set-up in triads like the Reaper Master Series paints or the Wargames Foundry paints, so be prepared to remember your color theory! Each box of eight colors has shades that run from dark to light, although you are not likely to use all of them in typical shading and highlighting exercise. Each box comes with a sample use of the paints specific to the set. There are two different step by step examples for you to work through. I find the translation to be particularly bad although its mostly understandable if you are willing to read it through a couple of times and pull the colors while you are doing it. The paints can be used in an airbrush and the instructions seem to be written for an airbrush user so pay attention.

These paints come out quite thick, they rival and even exceed Vallejo Model Color in thickness coming out of the bottle. They thin easily though and don't seem to separate like other brands when thinned. They definitely need to be thinned way down when used through an airbrush. There are a number of youtube videos out there and some are by Scale 75 using the paints through an airbrush but no real tutorials yet. These dry dead flat to, these are probably the mattest paints I have ever used.

I'm still learning to use them at this point, so I don't have any hints of tips yet and I really haven't found any on the internet. The Scale 75 examples are not particularly good, they don't go into any step by step techniques although they are fun to watch.