Greetings!
Knowing I wanted to improve my face painting skills on both 1/35 and 1/16 my wife kindly bought me 2 flesh color sets for my birthday. The Ammo Flesh Tones Set (Acrylic) and the Abteilung 502 Flesh Colors Set (Oils). I had hoped for some instructions or suggestions in either but nothing at all. Can someone please advise me on either online guides or books to buy that will at least guide me in using these 2 sets. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

My bible for the last 35 years has been the chapter out of Shep Paine's "How to Build Dioramas" ... still after all these years all the guide you'll need.

There are many "You Tube" videos on face painting.

Hi Steve,

If you have a look I think in the tips & techniques section, there is an sbs in there

Mike

I found this guide on Vallejo’s website to be very useful - http://www.acrylicosvallejo.com/en_US/painting-a-face/blog/1/38. The biggest thing I have learned is to make sure you use a wet palette, this keeps helps prevent the paint from drying out and also makes mixing shades a lot easier, whatever system you use, you will need to mix intermediate stages. I have a few paint sets but now only use 4 main colours and mix shades using them to build up lighter / darker tones as needed. If you haven’t got a wet palette you can make one for less than a couple of pounds. All you need is a plastic container (size you get form a takeaway), some baking paper and some kitchen towel. Remove the lid and cut or fold some kitchen paper to fit, fill the lid with water and place the towel on top and let it soak up the water, pour the excess water away. Then cut some baking paper to the same size of the lid and press down on the wet kitchen towel, it may curl up to start with, but just press it back down and then you can mix your paints on it, if it starts to dry just add some drops of water and you can carry on, when you have finished a session just pop the tub on as a lid !. For painting the face, I always try and get the paint to be very translucent, almost like dirty water, dip the brush in the paint and remove most of it on a kitchen towel, you don’t want the brush to be flooded with paint which will go everywhere when you touch your figure, I then check the transparency on my thumb, checking the colour is there, but can still see my flesh. My thumb ends up looking a right mess at the end of a session. Just keep applying the paint in very light layers, building up the colour slowly. Also try to brush down so not to create tide marks on the face.






Most of all it takes practice and lots of it. I am nowhere near an expert, but hopefully get better each time I paint a figure.

For me if you want use the mix tecnique Acrilics/Oils the best is the book from a Master of this tecnique "Paintigs Miniatures" from Danilo Cartacci

http://www.aurigapublishing.it/libri_elenco.asp?collana=Historical%20figurer%20english

you can buy also in e-Book format
https://www.bookrepublic.it/book/9788888711621-painting-miniatures/?cv=1

Here is a tutorial that i learned on. It is detailed with instructions, and tells you colors that are used. you can obviously go with different colors, but you will get a good grasp using it.

http://zyclyon-tutorials.blogspot.sg/2009/03/painting-head-by-calvin-tan-head-is.html