This is usually caused by not having a texture in the diffuse channel.

Some figure materials are setup to use the ALT_DIFFUSE channel and set the diffuse channel to a 0 value. If this is the case - plug in the texture in the diffuse channel and leave the value at 0. Then the preview should look fine

If that is not the case - show a screencap of the materials for the face. Maybe we can see of something else is not set correctly