HOW do you give your 1/35 figures realistic faces?

great tips Jeff Herne do you know any local Voodoo ladies that I can by shrunken heads from? LOL To paint eyes, I apply a strip of white where to the eye is supposed to be, then after it has dried, paint with the skin colour until it looks right. Then apply a small dot of blue and touch it up to make it look right.

I prime the faces with a Humbrol Scarlet ( no. 60 ). I use oils - yellow ochre, burnt umber, white and mix up three different tones, a darker one for shadow areas, a mid tone and a lighter tone for highlights. The eyes are so small that i rarely add white to the eyes. The upper eye lid I add cobalt blue to the shadow tone to line the lid and do the pupil the same time. Feathering between tones soften the contrast. See my Legionaire elswhere on thsi page.

I keep my recipe simple.
I've just begun to prepaint the eyes larger than tehy will end up using an off while (ANA sand is one choice) and dark blue or brown for the pupil. I've been trying to put the pupil looking more to one side or the other to give mnore visual interest and to make it easier to align them than trying to point themn straight forward.
I then mix a bit of burnt sienna into some titinum white untl it looks like the back of my hand. This is the base color and I aply it to the whole face. I then add almost pure burnt sienna to the edges/shadows (hairline, eyesockets, collar line, nose edge, chin cleft, under the nose with an 18 (yes eighteen) 0 liner brush and blend the colors. The eyes get reduced at this point to a narrow almond shape. Now a bit of pure white toe the ridge of the nose, cheeks and tip pf hte chin and blend these to ighten these areas. If the lips are porminent, they might get a touch of Alizaren crimson to the flesh mix or a bit more burnt sienna. For a female face I'd do the same with less burnt sienna and a touch of Alizaren crimson added to pink up the cheeks. I may use a touch, just the tiniest amount, of burnt umber for hre darkest shadows, but I don't like the contrast. This is a cooler color than burnt sienna.

You can always use my method, which is dang near perfect...

Step #1: Find a local Voodoo lady, and purchase shrunken heads.
Step #2: replace resin heads with shrunken heads.
Step #3: Apply helmets, hats, glasses, eyepatches, as necessary.

Ok, I'm kidding. the industry standard is oils...although acrylics are catching on, all of the world's best figure painters use oils...I use only 6 colors, all Daler-Royney oils.

They have a Flesh Tint, which I use as a base over the primer (usually gray or black).

Buff Titanium - which has a beige tone to it.
Burnt Sienna - for the red tones
Raw Umber - for the browns
White - for lightening
Black - for darkening

Lips - 1:1:1 Flesh Tint, burnt umber, white
Eyes - 1:1 white and flesh tint (for the pupils)
Deep shadows - Raw umber
Mid shadows - Burnt sienna
Highlights - Flesh tint

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!

Jeff Herne
Modelwarships.com

also I wouldnt try shep pains method, cause it usually blends out the detail with to much paint.

ok I'll give you a quick run down on my method (MAKE SURE ALL PAINTS ARE MODEL MASTERS ENAMLE)... (AND DONT PUT THE HELMET ON TILL UR DONE PAINTING THE FACE) first take model masters skin tone warm tint and paint the whole face over... next take modelmasters skintone shadow tint and put a small dab on the chin in the eye sockets, under the nose and under the bottom lip... quickly wipe off ur brush and blend them in, dont worry if you cant see them very well cause the existing light will help takecare of the shadows... next take modlemasters tan and on the bridge of the nose put a light stripe of tan... wipe the brush off with a papertowle and blend it into the side of the nose and the forehead... take a dab of tan and put it on each cheek and blend it in. same for the chin and the forehead. take tan and very lightly drybrush over the raised parts of the ears... next take a dark color like black or darkbrown and put a small stripe right above the eyes on the forehead for the eyebrows. finally take tan again and put a very very small dab on the very tip of the nose, wipe off the brush and slightly slightly blend it in... the shadow from the helmet will eliminate the need for eyeballs and the fact that troops are usually squinting anyways before you put the helmet on, do the hair a darker color then dry bursh over with a distinctivly lighter color but not to light... finally add the helmet (head gear) and your head is done

Not sure if this is too late or not, but testors has a free book that walks you through, figures and weathering for details. You can download it at www.testors.com/hobbyist_guides.asp
It is a modelers technical guide and is loaded with information, you can purchase or download for free.
Hope this helps

Dave

Thank you for the links David.
mark956

David
You forgot to mention Shep Paine's "Building and Painting Scale Figures" Isn't it still available from Kalmbach? I think its one of the better references on figure painting out there.

thanks guys, i appreciate the links!

I guess I could remove some of them if it's too many.

lol you call that a couple????

Here are a couple of links:

Figure Articles @ Missing-lynx.com

Painting faces @ Figure International

The Painting Clinic

Painting Faces and Eyes - scroll down until you see that header.

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Tip for those new to painting figures...

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I have the same question with my 1/24 scale figures. I am modeling the faces using SuperSculpey, which has a nice, semi-translucent, realistic flesh-colored look, but I don't quite dare to paint in facial detail. I've painted the hair, and the natural shadows reveal the detail on the face, but I've not done anything more. I'm tempted to leave the faces as they are. Any help, or links to images of faces modeled at this scale, would be appreciated. Thanks.