# Frankenstein skin tone



## NTRPRZ (Feb 23, 1999)

I'm just about ready to finally paint the hands and face of the Moebius' Frankenstein monster, but am torn about how to do so. 
Should he be greenish, as we all know and love him, but only because that's the color of Karloff's makeup for the movie? 
Should he be regular skin tones? 
Should he be pale with bluish, death-like skin? 
I've seen excellent depictions on these boards, and I've followed the suggestions about various ways to fix up the kit. But the skin tones are something I'm still undecided about. 
What's everyone's theory? And what are your suggestions for achieving what you suggest? Jeff


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## razorwyre1 (Jan 28, 2004)

whatever floats your personal boat... you can justify it anyway you please.

mary shelley described the flesh color as yellowish, jack pierce made him a pale green, genuine dead flesh comes in a wide range of colors, reanimated flesh...nobody knows. you could even do the whole kit as b/w monochrome.

the wonderful thing is that you can never be absolutely wrong, except within a given context, and since the decision as to that context is up to you, no matter how you go, youre always right!. hey if you want to go totally psychedelic with florescent colors. thats fine too!

now personaly id either go with the way jack pierce painted karloff's skin, or id go with the b/w monochrome. but thats my personal thing.


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## RSN (Jul 29, 2008)

I set out determined to do flesh tones with a bluish "death" look, but had no sucess until I used green. Then it looked right.


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## rkoenn (Dec 18, 2007)

I am doing a Frankenstein WIP article on the board here. I have a picture posted in my thread that shows the face and hands. The picture makes him look more naturally flesh color but seeing it first hand it has a light green pale valor to it. I think I used pale flesh paint and then added a dead flesh to it until I had the green I desired. It probably isn't exactly what I was hoping for but came close. I mixed up about twice what I needed so I could repaint and touch up as necessary. You can look at my work in progress in my thread here if you like. Good luck.


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## razorwyre1 (Jan 28, 2004)

i discovered something a few year back that might be helpful to you here: 

i was painting a life size female vampire sculpt. i basecoated her in violet, then started highlighting her in fleshtone with the airbrush. the fleshtone seemed to suck a lot of the color saturation out of the purple, turning it gray. conversely, the violet foundation tended to neutralize a lot of the intensity of the color of the fleshtone. i then lightened the fleshtone to a vampiric pale and highlighted it further. 
using a violet that was more blue than the one i had used might give you the blue-ish dead flesh that you are looking for.

on another kit, a future medusa bust, i used an olive green basecoat and then airbrushed a healthy, slightly tan, fleshtone as the main skin color. now you wouldnt think that olive green shadows would work on a fleshtone character, but it really worked well. it seemed natural, not "painted". I imagine that it would work even better using a yellower flesh color (looking either more oriental or jaundiced), for a natural "greenish" frankenstein.

by the way, very few of the real human cadavers i have seen in photographs look blueish or blue-gray-ish. they tend more toward a waxy yellow.


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## bat21angel1 (Jan 21, 2010)

I painted mine yellow-green. It looks better that just green. I started out with a flesh tone but I didn't like as much as I do with the yellow-green paint. I used Tamaya paints to paint the skin, dry brush purple for bruising, flat red for his fore-head scar, and on his neck. I painted the finger nails black with a touch of purple. I haven't finished quite yet but will be done soon. Also painted some black on his lips and I still have some touch up work to do.


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