Painting scars and bruises

[The Black Rider]

I am currently painting the fighters in the foundry civillian set. However I am at a bit of a loss of how to paint bruises and scars. Especially considering one of my fighters has dark skin!I just added blue and purple to dwarf flesh at the moment but im not convinced still!

Help!! 

[The Hooded Claw]

See if you can find osme video of a few boxing matches? I really haven't had much luck painting them either. My best result was an accident and I can't even say how I managed it.

[Gluteus Maximus]

See if you can find osme video of a few boxing matches? I really haven't had much luck painting them either. My best result was an accident and I can't even say how I managed it.

The problem with bruises, is that they change colour rapidly, going from purplish blue through to yellowish brown with all sorts of different combinations of greens, reds etc. I did read a description of the colour sequence and time it takes in a crime novel, but having a memory like a sieve..... 

If you are really stumped, try asking your partner/sibling/parent/local hardcase to beat you up and then photograph the results 

The boxing idea is a good one though - there should be plenty of boxing websites with pics of recently battered pugilists.

As for scars, they tend to be light coloured in tanned skin, as the scarred flesh doesn't tan. On very pale skin, a darker flesh-coloured line should do.

[Plynkes]

On very pale skin, a darker flesh-coloured line should do.

Do you think? I'm pretty pale-skinned, and my scars are what I can only describe as off-white. Certainly much lighter than the surrounding skin.

[JollyBob]

My scars are very white as well, but that wouldn't show up on a mini. Perhaps you could do a thin line of darker flesh colour, with a higlighted stripe of next to white just to give it definition.

That said, I have seen people with facial scars that stay quite pink for years after the injury. I dunno, maybe it just depends on the person and there's no "right" way to do it. 

[Plynkes]

If the scars are cast on the figure, like some of the Foundry DA types with ritual scarring, it would be quite easy to paint the skin darker around the scar and highlight the raised portion much lighter. That might work. Of course, some scars are raised lumps, whereas others lie in a recess. That is definitely going to alter how they will look.

As for the darker skintones, being an avid tennis fan I have noticed that Serena Williams has a scar from knee surgery. Annoyingly for painters, sometimes it looks much lighter than the surrounding skin, other times much darker. Must be the way scar tissue reflects the light or something. My scars are kind of shiny, and can look different in different light conditions and from different angles.

Couldn't find a decent pic of said knee, but it wasn't through want of trying. You'd think a tennis-player's knee would be in a lot of photos, but those wacky photographers always seem to be trying to capture other parts of the body for some reason...

[Plynkes]

Anyway, some scars on dark-skinned folks who aren't Serena Williams, though they are of the ritual sort, rather than the kind you might get in a knife-fight:







Mustn't forget this African Scar: