I am a brown person. Medium brown skin is kinda weird sometimes. Here’s a thread on why I don’t think colourpicking from reference is a good way to learn how to colour/shade brown skin, and a proposed alternative technique that I use for colouring:
Colourpicking is tough because first of all, it doesn’t really take into account how light and shadow affects the skin. Here’s a chart of Mirabel—I colour picked from these photos and tried to use em as her base skin colour… None of it really seems to *be* Mirabel though.
So, the thing about brown skin is that it doesn’t reflect as much as light skin, and it doesn’t absorb as much as dark skin either. It’s kinda waffling in the middle—which is why brown skin looks incredibly different depending on lighting. Take these photos of Beyonce…
So how do we shade this then? Well, here’s where colourpicking can actually sorta help! With the colours picked from before, I can kind of gauge what colour the light source and shadows might be, and use them!
Especially if you’re the type of medium brown that leans more towards the reddish/pinkish sort of undertone rather than gold? Oooh boy, you could even look downright white...
Once again, Mirabel’s skin seems to be somewhere in the middle. The way I try to figure it out is by finding and example where she’s lit neutrally, and then I just kinda… eyeball it. I messed around with the settings until I got a base colour that I think Mirabel would likely be
OH an addendum: this doesn't even take into consideration the fact that brown comes in so many tones and shades and hues, and that people can get paler and tanner according to the year, and that brown people can flush red...
Brown is diverse and amazing and I love it so much💖
If you showed me only the first photo, I would think that she’s got pale skin. But in the second one, she looks dark. But the truth is, she’s probably somewhere in the middle, like in the third photo. Even for me, under diff lighting, my skin can look fairer than it really is…
The best way to learn how to colour em is through references—and not just blindly colour picking because you will most likely *not* get the true skin colour of the subject that way. We gotta eyeball it and remember that the truth is always somewhere right there in the middle.
The point of this thread is to show that medium brown skin is kinda funky and has a tendency to sort of mimic the environment its in—which is why someone who you think definitely looks brown in one setting can look almost pale and washed out in other settings. :>
That is to say, brown skin can be tricky sometimes. So, how do you colour characters with brown skin? Can you just colourpick from a reference and call it a day?
Well, no not exactly…
Grogu Djarin = nice. Makes sense. Fits the naming convention of all the other Mandos we've seen in SW
Din Grogu = sounds like a cursed and illegal tag on AO3
Hello, this is my application to the Star Trek Lower Decks fandom. I can make doodles, and laugh really, really stupidly hard. Please accept this art offering. Thank you for your consideration.
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My time has come. Here's a crashcourse on Maul media and stories that I personally recommend if you want to get a better understanding of our favourite former-Darth 🐞🐞🐞
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