I will show how I paint skin, and also cover the area of painting eyes, just in case you might need a hand.
I start painting skin with a base colour of Bronzed Flesh over the top of a white undercoat. I will use this Pit Fighter as an example.
When the base colour has dried, I then apply a coat of Flesh Wash (what else should it be used for?). I make sure that the wash settles in the 'valleys' of the muscles, and in the folds of the skin, like the eye area, around the nose, mouth and ears. I also make sure that the wash sits alongside other objects that lay right next to the skin, such as the shoulder straps, and chain mail gloves. Here is what my wash coat ends up looking like.
Once the wash has dried completely, I then go back to the Bronzed Flesh and paint the first highlight. In the picture below you can see that I have left the wash in the appropriate places. So, basically, any area that is raised, gets repainted. You can see on the face how I have picked out the forehead, eyebrows, cheeks, ears, nose and chin line.
It's at this stage that I can start to see the image come alive. The last step is one more highlight. For this I use Elf Flesh, for it's lighter tone, rather than mixing Skull White into Bronzed Flesh. I have again picked out the same places on the model, but with less area, such as the point of the nose, the highest point on the cheeks and the lips. I have also put some Armour Wash (for it's black tone) in the mouth. As the pigment is not as strong as Black Wash, I can still see where the teeth are without having to strain my eyes.
As the flesh is now finished I can concentrate on the teeth and eyes. As this is a Pit Fighter, I decided to give him metal teeth. So I used Chainmail Silver to pick them out. But for normal teeth you might like to use Bleached Bone or Skull White. As for the eyes, you really need a steady hand a fine pointed brush. Starting with Chaos Black, I fill the eyeball area, trying not to get any on the top and bottom eyelids.
After the Chaos Black has dried, I then apply Skull White to the center of the black area. I prefer to have the white touching the bottom eyelid, and this in turn leaves a black area above. This will help reduce the effect of the model looking like it is staring, rather than being angry.
The the last and final trick is to put in the pupils. Using Chaos Black again, I apply the paint so that the top and bottom of the dot are touching the top and bottom of the eye whites. Again this helps to stop the staring appearance as you can see below.
So all in all, he doesn't look too bad. All that needs to be done now is to cleanup the surrounding areas where I have got flesh colours on parts that I didn't want (you guessed it, I'm not perfect). But I really should start drinking less coffee
