Skin Tones. Learn Them. Now.

One of the big mistakes artists make, is only sticking to drawing one specific skin tone. Usually they draw what their comfortable with, which is usually their own race. This is NORMAL. Everyone has been guilty of this in the beginning (even myself). While there's no one directly saying that you HAVE to incorporate different races, it's important to!

To say it's easy to learn is an understatement. You're breaking out of your comfort zone and learning new colors. Yes! Colors! All races have many different undertones and highlights in their skin pigmentation. Everyone's skin is composed of different "colors".

This is a BASIC skin tone cheat sheet. It's a great baseline for practicing and experimenting. Use it if nothing else on Pinterest suits you fancy. I would not recommend using this for realistic art. This is solely for the purpose of cartoons/illustrations.

Why is that? Well, to learn skin shades for realistic art, this palette would be alot longer and harder to follow. Undertones are HARD. No matter what race, undertones stink. It's hard to find that perfect balance. If you give someone too much of a yellow undertone, they could end up looking like Homer Simpson. NOT GOOD. Eventually I may do a more indepth video tutorial about the more complex colors and how to achieve them effortlessly. For now, we'll keep it real simple.

By learning how to represent people of different races/ethnicities, you can broaden your portfolio and take on more diverse commissions. When you first start out, there's a chance you'll screw up. Your white people will probably be white as paper. Your african Americans will most likely have strong orange hues, and it's OKAY! Rome wasn't built in a day and neither is your portfolio. That's why practice is so important!

I've made 6 head shaped outlines perfect for practicing. You can save and download it to your device and color over them like a coloring book.

Here's three examples I did using the colors from the skin palette I made. you can use as many shades as you want to create more in-depth characters!

This is an OC (original character) sheet from another children's book I'm currently working on. Notice how all the colors in her face work together her tones?

The base color labeled is what comes first. I'll color all skin parts the base color, then blend in the shadow shade or "S" into the outer edges and facial features like the nose outline or inside of the ears. The highlight or "H" goes on top of the base and shadows and you blend them together.

You need to play around with it and see what works best for you.

Now get to practicing!