Skin Painting With a Slight Difference

[Knikki]

OK

One of my plans ( I have many) is to do a figure of one of my favourite fantasy characters called Elric of Melniboune, a creation of Michael Moorcock,

I have a figure in mind, which will need a little converting.

However the thing I am struggling a little with is Elric's skin colour as all the descriptions of him are "skull white skin and hair".

Basically he is a very pale Albino.

Where do you start with an albino?

Light skin, with shadow (can an albino have shadows?) of a medium skin colour and then highlighted with very very pale pink or even white?

Anyone any idea?

Cheers

Edited November 25, 2015 by Knikki

[giemme]

Interesting subject. Looking in Internet, you can find many pictures as reference, see for instance here.

You can definitely have shadows, and various tone variation of the base color, according to the (limited) number of pics I saw after a quick search; you can either play with cream tones, rather than more reddish, down to grey-sh ones. The key is probably that the shadow ares are going to be very limited, while maximum lights, as you say, could even be made with an almost white mix (sort of off-white)

Not that I ever tried doing anything like that, but the subject is intriguing, so I thought I'd toss my in.

HTH

Ciao

[Mitch K]

Even on an albino there will be shadows - that isn't a pigment issue, it would be an effect of lighting. There will be tonal differences too, as depending on the thickness of the skin, you will see some effects from blood/blood vessels being visible through the dermis.

When I painted Elric many decades back, I used a very pale ivory colour as the base on one effort, and a very pale sky grey on another, both highlighted with the brightest white I could find.

Fantasy artists like Rodney Matthews and Chris Achilleos both painted Elric for book/game covers - would their efforts be helpful?

[dogsbody]

I shall be following this topic. I read a lot of Moorcock's books way back in the early 80's. I well remember Elric of Melniboune.

Chris.

[Knikki]

Interesting subject. Looking in Internet, you can find many pictures as reference, see for instance here.

Thanks for that link it is certainly a better than the ones I found and also thanks for the tips as well.

Even on an albino there will be shadows - that isn't a pigment issue, it would be an effect of lighting. There will be tonal differences too, as depending on the thickness of the skin, you will see some effects from blood/blood vessels being visible through the dermis.

When I painted Elric many decades back, I used a very pale ivory colour as the base on one effort, and a very pale sky grey on another, both highlighted with the brightest white I could find.

Fantasy artists like Rodney Matthews and Chris Achilleos both painted Elric for book/game covers - would their efforts be helpful?

I have books by Chris Achilleos and Rodney Matthews I am going to dig them out tonight and have a look, forgotten I had them

Also I got a couple of new Elric books from Amazon by Julie Blondel and Didier Poli which is a graphic novel, they are good if a little more gruesome than he has previously been show in Heavy Metal and Epic comics of the 80's.

But thanks all for the tips

[wyverns4]

How about mixing a pale grey into your flesh colour until there is just a mere hint of flesh remaining and using that as your base colour and then adding white to highlight, (probably finishing with a faint touch of pure white for the highest highlights) and adding flesh to start the shadow and then using a darker blue, (cool effect) or brown, (warm effect), to deepen the shadow.

For the hair perhaps a sequence of grays...?

Christian, exiled to the place where the Pope is.

[Will Vale]

I think you want to pay a lot of attention to the way light shines through skin, making it reddish - with the extra degree of translucency it would be more apparent

Also venous blues and purples..

Will

[68 SQUADRON]

i picked up some paint a couple of years ago though sadly i cant recall where. its a make called minitaire, the colour is fairytale flesh its almost white with just a very slight tint of pink. its the lightest iv found n believe me im always looking around for some nice flesh lol