First timer and color blind - seeking advice for flesh tones

I too have not had much success brush painting Tamiya.

In your situation I would recommend buying a "flesh tones" set. There are usually 6-8 bottles in a set. Vallejo and other brands (but not, to my knowledge Tamiya) make these. You could have a friend arrange them in order from lightest color to darkest color and then write a number on them so you could keep them in order. They are probably in the correct order in the box but that's no guarantee.

 I have the Vallejo set but that is the only set I could find when I went looking. I'm sure their are reviews out there somewhere comparing the sets. It includes a tutorial on how to do shading.

In Alex Castros book "The Art of Painting Minature" there is a "recipe" for making a flesh set with Tamiya XF-15, XF-7, and XF-3. Flesh, Red, Yellow.

Just do a Google search on "flesh tone paint sets".

Pretty good listing here of some Vallejo mixes for flesh, as well as some uniform colours:

www.coloradominiatures.com/infovallejopaints.aspx

regards,

Jack

My base for Vallejo is either Beige Red or Brown Rose for caucasian skin. Fordarker skins, as in native Americans, I add varying amounts of Burnt Cadmium Red. This is also my shading color mix for caucasian skin. My lightening color is Light Flesh, first mixed min with the base color then applied as a very thinned layer on the top highlights, such as just above the lips, the tip of the nose and highest point on the  cheekbones.

Follow this link for an excelent article on the using Vallejo to paint just about any skin tone:

www.coolminiornot.com/.../1310-ethnic-skintones

I find that Tamiya paints work with a brush only of they are very thin, and then they work fine.  But they have to be thinned to where it takes more than one coat to work well, where they just flow on off of the brush.

Lots of fantastic tips, thanks guys!