Coloring Ethnic Skin with Prismacolors on White

Hi Guys,

Its been a while since I've done a coloring tutorial on white cardstock so bear with me as I was kind of eeeeek! But I think I worked it out so I hope the color combination helps you out as well.

Coloring Ethnic skin tones can be quite a challenge for us pasty whites. You kind of need to retrain your eyes to see all the colors that make up dark skin as opposed to just seeing "brown". The danger of just seeing brown is that your ethnic coloring will look a bit like, well, chocolate pudding , and that's not flattering at all.

I have a lot of black friends and their skin tones vary tremendously. Some are really dark, others really light, some red toned, some yellow toned, it really varies just as much as light skin. 

So here I am going to show you just one way of coloring dark skin.

Please don't expect perfection.

(and by the way, I know black people don't "blush"~ at least we don't see them blush, but you know what?So be it. Ive given this child a rosy brown complexion. Its called artistic licence.

I'm using a digi by Mo Manning called "Dante's Drum" and prismacolor Pencils.

The first 6 steps are done with a light touch, all over color. Try to color as evenly as possible and avoid pencil streaks

With Steps 7-9 we are building up the darker shadows for contouring.

Dark brown in the deepest shadows.

A close up so you can see where we are right now.

Building on the darker areas with umber and sienna...

Even out the tones with goldenrod and peach

And a wee bit of pink

Some process red for making the skin "pop" (go EASY, its very strong)

More blending cos you just can't do it enough..

OK, and a bit more.....

And we're done!

PS) Yes, I will be doing an ethnic coloring on kraft tutorial soon !!