Today I am reviewing the Scale 75 Artist Skin Tones set, which contains six paints and as you might expect is aimed at skin tones.
The set comes in a thick cardboard box. The contents are on the back:
SART-07 Pink Flesh
SART-08 Golden Flesh
SART-09 Light Skin
SART-10 Crimson
SART-11 Moss Green
SART-12 Burnt Skin
They come in tubes rather than droppers, and the paint itself is very thick – think toothpaste consistency. Definitely requires thinning before use!
They’re pretty well held fast in the box, and the foam is solid enough that you can keep on using it as storage without it disintegrating. There’s also a colour guide, which is pretty decent from a beginner’s perspective:
Following the guide proved reasonably easy, although the paint feels very chalky if not thinned enough! You really have to work with several thin coats here to get smooth coverage, and my initial attempts with it were fairly frustrating. Once thinned enough, though – just with water was fine – and with a bit more patience the results improved quite a bit. The first face I tried with it was a 1994 Techmarine metal miniature:
With less than a dozen faces under my painting belt I was reasonably happy with loosely following the guide and having a go. If you have been painting with Citadel/Vallejo/etc. and have not been thinning paints these will probably feel like there’s a fair bit of a learning curve to them, but if you get past that they’re quite a joy to use and the matte look is one I really appreciate.
The colour palette provided appears to allow a pretty good range of colours, although I am far from an expert on painting skin tones and have not tried anything darker than a Caucasian colouring.
I have been primarily brushing them on but I did try them through an airbrush and had mixed results until I used the Scale75 thinners specifically, which seemed to work better. There must be a good mix of the flow improver/thinners/whatever else in the Scale 75 stuff, as I wasn’t managing to get it going as well it using Vallejo’s thinners and flow improver.
The Skin Tones set is around $60AUD on eBay AU – so $10 per tube – and given that they’re 20ml tubes that compares favourably with buying Citadel base or layer paints, which are $6.40/12ml – which works out to be $10.66/20ml. You probably won’t end up using the green nearly as much as the other tubes if you’re doing human skin, but it’s quite a nice green on it’s own and it’ll certainly find use in other areas.
Overall – I have really enjoyed using the Scale paints and it has been a good learning experience having to play around a lot more with thinning and mixing to achieve the results I want. If you prefer to prime/zenithal/contrast or base coat/wash your way through skin tones, this probably isn’t the set for you. Otherwise, though, I think it has promise! Recommended.