ysabetwordsmith | Skin Tone Gradients

I like this chart of skin tones with gradients because it starts with a basic range of fair to dark, then has smaller sets of pink, red, yellow, and olive. Each of the base skin tones then has three additional "tan line" tones that are darker versions of it. My only regret is that it leans darker, so you don't get a full range of the lighter shades. But other sets tend to run light, which makes this one very useful.

In T-America, many of the midrange vendors of makeup and clothes will offer a "nude" range with this kind of construction. (To them, "nude" doesn't mean "Caucasian average color" it means "your skin tone.") It's also what medical vendors offer as standard options for skin-tone prosthetics. Many people who can't find a match on the basic sets of five or ten tones can find one here. Beyond that usually requires custom matching, although some high-end makeup companies have a hundred or so standard shades.

EDIT 3/31/20: These are some sets I use for skin color words, organized by alphabet and by gradient.

You can also set up gradients for other colors than standard human skin.

Art exercises for skin tones are here.

This set of Olympic athletes shows great variety in body shape as well as skin tones.

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Speaking as an occasional artist, thanks for this. It's useful as reference.

I added a few other references with that in mind.

Some really fun exercises for blending colors:

* Get reference images of different skin tones and experiment with how well you can match them.

* Choose a good tutorial for mixing skin tones. Then substitute nonhuman colors for human ones. Do a set for blue skin, green skin, orange skin, and so on. Try to imagine what the base color, overtone, undertone, highlight, and lowlight colors would be. This is how the really kick-ass F&SF artists get their realism: they're using realistic techniques and just altering the details.

* You don't have to do whole portraits. You can do thumbnail sets. These let you play with color combinations, without using a lot of time or materials, so you can learn what works.

Edited 2023-07-29 23:01 (UTC)

Saved that for future reference when writing.

I added a few more for that.

Thank you very much! Having a visual reference guide is very helpful. [as much as I write, in my head I'm primarily visual in nature, I write describing the movies I see in my minds eye.]

You're welcome! I also use visual references for body type. My favorite is a series of Olympic athletes (which also includes a complete range of skin tones).

I remeber seeing that before, but now i've got it bookmarked, thank you. Although, that figure skater! She looks tiny in comparison!

That's because she is tiny. She's five feet one inch tall -- just over Pips' height.

Hm, my Beloved is 5'4" [a handspan taller than that figure skater] but I don't think of her as small.

I guess it's the size of the spirit that counts, and that's hard to convey in a posed photo like that.

Still, a set of relative sizes like that is useful reference guide, can character X rest their chin on character Y's head and so on..

People meeting me routinely say, "Funny, I thought you were taller."

I am taller. I'm just wearing short meat in this life.

If you're talking about the picture of Tara Lipinski - it's also partially the pose. She's lost an extra couple inches probably by standing with her feet so far apart. She's the same height as Shannon Miller, the gymnast in the row above, but due to the pose she looks a fair bit shorter.

True, but Tara is 5'1" and that's just generally tiny.

I always struggle having a complexion of the Morticia Addams variety!

Skin Tone Gradients

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You're welcome!

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