How to paint heavily tanned skin?

Hello!

First thing - look at some photos. Getting a better feel at what you want to get is always a good thing.

Second thing - you wouldn't use one single colour for a face would you? At least some shading is what you need for the figs to look interesting.

Taking the above into consideration I'd advise mixing some brown into the XF-15 and using that for a base, with darker brown washes and then the highlights (top of the nose, forehead) could be shaded with straight XF-15 that would be lighter colour then.

I don't know if you paint the eyes, but it's good to use light grey/dark grey instead of white/black for that, then you can avoid that pop-eyed look on the faces.

Here are some figs that I did - maybe thic can help you:

http://www.vietnam.net.pl/M55mod2pl.htm

http://www.vietnam.net.pl/M42mod6en.htm

Hope it helps, have  a nice day

Paweł

castelnuovo

I am building Tamiya's SAS jeep in North Africa. The figures are quite a prominent part of this build. The instructions say to use the XF-15 Flat Flesh but it looks too pink, as if the crew have just arrived from European winter .

Any suggestions for dark, tanned skin?

I second Pawel, using Tamiya's acrylics, adding a little bit of Tamiya's flat brown will help give a tanned color.

I like the quick fix, though, too-I also use Andrea's and Vallejo's acrylics, and they have a range of flesh colors, from light flesh to dark flesh, and pink flesh.  I can blend these on a figure, to get my highlights and shadows.

Also, a tiny bit of Prussian blue mixed in to your flesh color can be used to produce five-o'clock shadow.

Shep Payne recommended adding "leather" to flesh tone paint--this has worked for me.

"Leather" tends to be warmer, more "red" than light borwn, which helps give a better range of hues.

Start dark and add lighter shades.

For eyes I like to paint the light  cornea color on only one side, or really small dots on both.

Instead of flat brown, I like red brown. I've noticed that Europeans or any fair skinned person usually has a reddish tint to their tan unlike people of darker complexion.