II :: Skin Tones
Skin comes in a vast range of colors, and the way we apply the basic formula for skin described in Section I will vary depending on which tone you want to portray. In this section, I will cover nine different basic skin tones. There are far more possibilities in the world than this, but seeing the same principles applied over and over should help you understand how to take those principles and modify them to whichever skin tone you need, real or imaginary.
Take a look at each face above. The swatches depict the base tones.
First note how soft and dull the bases are. Base tones are there to build on; adding “life” is where the rest of your colors come in. Next, take a look at the first three swatches. See how the second swatch is more yellow and the first, and the third is more pink? The saturation and brightness is very close for all of them, but the slight variation of COLOR gives a foundation to build three unique skin tones.
This color variation is called the undertone, and it happens in all shades of skin. You can’t simply think of skin in terms of light, medium, and dark—you must consider the undertone as well. Undertones can be described in temperatures (warm, neutral, cool) or colors (olive, yellow, pink, lavender). They can help to establish ethnicity, but there’s a lot of variation within the races so I’m not going to focus on that. The important thing is that people are simply aware undertones exist, and think about them when they choose their colors.
An undertone is present throughout the entire palette, but can be established by the base tone. So when painting skin, choose your base first. Then choose the rest of your mid-tones to build off that base. Remember that the mid-tone range is what depicts the “color” of your skin, so the mid-tones should reflect the undertone as well, but WITHOUT sacrificing balance. A skin with a yellow undertone will need an overall “yellowish” palette, but your colors should never be ALL yellow. Color variation is the secret to realistic skin.
Because mid-tones define a skin color, that—and highlights—is what this section will focus on. I will touch on choosing shadow tones, but Section III will discuss shadows more in-depth. For now, just know that they depend a lot on the rest of the colors in the image. My backgrounds are gray in this section so the shadows mostly darker, more saturated variations of the mid-tones.
There are a lot of color swatches in this section. While they depict the main colors I used, they are NOT the only colors I used. There is no X number of colors needed to create good skin, but this is one area where more is often better. Experiment!
:: LIGHT SKIN 
The three main types of light skin are neutral (1), pale gold (2), and porcelain (3).
The neutral skin is a standard Caucasian skin tone commonly focused on in other skin painting tutorials, so you may already know the drill. The base tone is a pinkish beige color. The rest of the mid-tones range through warm beiges (more orange than yellow) and pale, dusty pinks. Again, note the COLOR and VALUE variation in the mid-tones For warmth tones, I like to have at least two colors—one brighter for the lighter parts of the skin, and one darker and richer (more saturated) for skin towards the shadows. Here I am using pink and red; the pink is a little colder than the red but neither are too extreme, since this skin has a neutral undertone.
The pale gold is has a strong yellow undertone, so some of the mid-tones and shadows will tilt towards yellow accordingly. But there are still soft pinks in the mid-tone range, and deep reds in the shadows, to help keep the skin’s yellow cast from over-powering it. I want the skin to look fresh, not sallow or jaundiced. The same thing is happening with the warmth tones: an orange to reinforce the yellow, and a red to counter it. Always try to balance your colors in this way.
The porcelain skin is the opposite: based in cool tones like pink and lavender. Most of the mid-tones are ashen and “grayed out”, but there is still some color in there—a dusty pink in the mid-tones and a rich brown in the shadows. This time, the coolness of the skin is balanced with an orange-ish warmth tone. This adds a bit of punch to the skin, keeping it “alive”. (But don’t go too heavy on the warmth tones; too much makes pale skin look flushed.) Also use the highlight colors to your advantage—they will add more subtle variation to the mid-tones.
Speaking of highlights: looking through the swatches in this section, notice that they are always just as bright for dark skin as they are for light skin. The specific colors change, but they are always a range of pastels. They are, however, used differently depending how light or dark the skin is.
In light skin, the transition between highlights and mid-tones should be very soft. Blend the highlights gently on top of your lightest mid-tones. This mimics the natural translucency of skin, and using multiple colors helps further that illusion. Just choosing a lighter mid-tone color won’t give you the same effect as blending the pastel tones on top. Trust me on this: it makes a huge difference in your end product.
:: MEDIUM SKIN
The three types of medium skin discussed here are gold (1), olive (2), and medium-deep (3).
Medium skin comes in an incredibly wide range. Nearly every ethnicity falls into this category in some way (the darkest of “light” skins and the lightest of “dark” skins, plus everyone in between). I am barely scratching the surface, but the two main variants are gold and olive ; most medium skin tones will fall somewhere to either side, whether more neutral or more extreme.
The difference between gold and olive skin tones is in the overall palette rather than just the undertone. Gold skin has a lot of warm yellow and red tones, where olive skin uses colder yellows that may even appear green. Even though the whole palette shifts, we still need some balancing colors. In the gold skin, one of the mid-tones almost matches the base tone of the colder olive skin and there’s also a cool greenish shadow tone. For the olive skin, I’ve got one pinkish mid-tone and several red-based shadow tones to offset the greenish ones. Both warmth colors are strong pinks.
I’m still using a variety of highlight colors. In these medium skins, warm highlights strengthen the overall tone (yellow highlights are good for olive; pink for gold) and cool highlights (green, blue, lavender) become a great asset for offsetting the rest of the colors naturally.
A tanned Caucasian skin tone [not illustrated] will fall somewhere between olive and gold—use similar warmth and saturation, but a more neutral undertone (unless they are faked tanned, in which case just use loads of orange).
A third type of medium skin that falls outside the gold-olive range is a very particular tone found in light-skinned blacks. I call this medium deep skin. It is characterized by a soft, pale brown undertone, almost like brown sugar. Although it’s darker, it acts like a light skin tone. Use the same guideline as the porcelain skin: it tends to be matte so use very, very soft highlights and just enough of the warmth tones to offset the ashen quality of the mid-tones.
:: DARK SKIN
The three dark skin tones I’ll discuss are neutral dark (1), dark olive (2), and ebony (3).
As skin gets darker, the mid-tones become more saturated and move closer to the shadow range, and by default further from the highlights. We still need to think about the undertone and overall palette the same as ever, but the way each color range is applied will change the darker skin becomes.
The neutral dark skin is essentially a darker, more saturated version of the medium deep skin. Lots of brown tones, cool and warm. Notice that while the darkest of the mid-tones are very close with some of the shadow tones value-wise, we still have that range of values in the mid-tone range—this becomes vital in dark skin, to help soften the jump into the highlight tones.
Dark skin is less transparent than light skin, so the warmth tones are darker and not used as heavily. They essentially become part of the mid-tone range, adding color without being too visible. Color variation is introduced through the mid-tone and shadow range instead.
In the dark olive skin, we’re following the same trends as the medium olive skin. The whole palette tilts towards cold yellow, with a few swatches looking almost green, but we’ve still got those balancing warm browns and reds. The orange strengthens the overall tone much like we saw in the pale gold skin.
Ebony skin is the darkest tone shown, and can be challenging to paint because the jump between the mid-tone and highlights becomes so extreme. But don’t fee daunted. Super dark skin like this is all about color. You can really go crazy and have fun with it. The undertone of skin this dark tends to be cool, so concentrate your colors on rich purples, indigos, and reds. Include a few warm browns to warm it up and use the warmth tones in the lighter mid-tone range, to add some punch before that jump to the highlights.
The last thing to note about dark skin is that while the mid-tones get darker, be careful not to make the shadow tones too harsh. They should always be a step darker and more saturated than your mid-tones, but also should carry a range of colors and values just like the mid-tone range. At the end of the day, the “color” of skin is portrayed by the mid-tones.
:: EXTRAS : FANTASY SKIN & EFFECTS
What I’ve been beating into your head this whole section is that the same principles can be modified to suit any color skin, literally. For any extreme unnatural color—green skin, red skin, black drow skin—all you need to do is choose your base and mid-tones to reflect the dominant color. The only exception is drow skin, because you don’t want to actually use black. Instead use a medium cold gray as a base and go from there, using colors for shadows and strong highlights the same way you would with the darkest natural skin tone above. And don’t forget to balance your palette, no matter what color the skin is. A red devil skin will need some cool complements thrown in to help “naturalize” it. Even crazy skin colors need color variation.
{...UNDER CONSTRUCTION...}
:: ETHEREAL SKIN: that fantasy glow
:: CORPSE SKIN: one for the monsters