MM face painting

I always do the eyes first, and the mouth. At least as small as 1/48. After all they are the most important features of the face. They give the charicter charicter! First paint the eyes and mouth and then as you do the shading and highlighting part put them in the correct purportion.

This is the first time I've heard of someone using pastels!
Most figure painters use either oils, the artist colors in tubes, of acrylics, with Vallejo/Andrea being the absolute best. There are probably as many styles as there are artists and most of us are constantly evolving.
This is my game plan right now: (Color references are for Vallejo/Andrea or artist oils. Other colors are generic.
Prime in light brown.
Paint the whites of the eyes light flesh and add an iris, light blue (Nordic), dark blue or brown (other caucasians) dark brown/black African/Native American)
Outline the eye with the base flesh color with beige red for caucasian, then the rest of the face with the same color.
Using very thinned shades of brown, fill in the frown lines, add shadows to the eye socket, under the chin, in the ears, along the collar and hair lines, in the cleft below the nose and in the chin and either side of the adam's apple. I use an 18/0 liner for this.
Next, mix and this light flesh with beige red for the first highlight for the forehead, cheeks, nose ridge, chin and ear ridges. A darker brown again very thin goes to the darkest areas of the previously shaded areas, but in smaller amounts and in the center or edges of the hair and collar lines. Finally, very thinned light flesh on the nose ridge, tip of the chin, high point of the adam's apple and the highest point on the forehead and tips of the ears.
For oils, you can use a mixture of titanium white and burnt sienna in varying degrees to get just about all the shadings you need.
For Native Americans, I add just a little reddish brown to get the effect of someone who'se been out in the sun a lot and for a black person, you can get a dark skinned effect with Andrea Dark Flesh from their game colors as a base or burnt umber oils. Use orange or raw sienna for highlights and van dyke brown (oil) for shadows. This will give you a pretty good mid range African skin effect.
Remember, in all cases, human skin runs from the lightest skinned indoor living Nordic person to very dark brown Africans and Aboriginal Australian with any shade in between.
As with the musician asking the cabbie how to get to Carnegie Hall, practice, practice, practice.

i use MM paints.....but the key is to use pastels.

Go out and get yourself some earth colored artist pastels. They should have a light flesh and a darker "dirt" color. the dirt is for a tan person, and the light flesh is for whitey's such as myself. If the person is going to be dirty, i would suggest getting black aswell.

Another thing you'll need is white pastels.

What I do to apply the pastels is take some off with a hobby knife and crush it up into a powder, then use a brush and apply it very lightly until you get the results you want. For the white, use the tip of a toothpick, and put them about where the eyes are. From there, take black and put a TINY bit on a needle, make sure it's not a drop of paint, or it will be too much!!!! apply to the middle of the newly created eyes.

With the earth colors, comes a redish color.....i use this for the lips. This is alittle tricky, use a toothpick, but put it on it's side so your running it almost parallel to the body of the person. Go light, and build it up.

hope this helps!