NIGHT CREATURES FLESH TONE

A palette for the pale skin of night creatures

This set of six acrylic tones is intended for vampires, the undead and other figures whose skin is meant to look cold and lifeless. The make-up consists of an off-white, a dark gray, a pale flesh shade, a purple, a deep violet and a dirty red, each in a bottle of seventeen milliliters.

The magic of this palette lies in combining opaque and glazing layers. The base is mixed from the gray and the off-white, the pale flesh tone goes over it, and only then do the purple and the violet suggest the veins showing through, the circles under the eyes and the bruises. The dirty red serves for the lips, the rims of the eyes and any wounds; used sparingly it gives a face the tension it needs, while in larger amounts the effect turns crude.

Working the material

The paints are water-thinnable, dry matte and hold well even on the smooth surface of a resin figure, provided it is degreased and primed beforehand. For glazing it pays to thin them very heavily and to let each layer dry, otherwise the pigment collects into patches that are then hard to remove.

The set will be appreciated above all by builders of figures in small scales, where the area of a face is only a few millimeters and the differences between the tones have to be very subtle. It is useful for the undead in grayer registers too, because the dark gray and the off-white allow the overall impression to be shifted from a bluish pallor all the way to ashen. The same make-up can in fact also be used on pale items of equipment, on bones or on the faded cloth of a cloak.