Good way to draw dark/brown skin in black and white?

[BlueWorldComics]

Anybody know of a good (inoffensive) way to indicate African-American skin tone while drawing in black and white without grayscale?

The art style is very simple and cartoony, so I cant rely on thick shading either.

Charles Schulz used to cross-hatch... Somehow I don't feel that's appropriate, but let me know.

[IndigoShirtProd]

Do you have access to digital screen tones? Is coloring the skin a dark grey not an option?

[frgmnt]

I've been wondering about the same a while ago actually. I really hope it's not an offensive thing to ask, I just want to make sure to do it correctly I never got around to making a thread about this, but I did make some examples of how portraying dark skin in only black and white could look like.

I'm definitely not a fan of A, lol - first off, it's not very readable, secondly, all the extra work with changing the lines' color it requires... Thirdly, it just doesn't look particularly good to me (also looks more like some fantasy pitch-black skin, rather than natural human black skin) and I don't recall seeing any comics/manga that did it this way, too.

B on the other hand might look like white-washing the character. Of course it's still going to be clear that the character is dark-skinned in chapter covers, bonus art, etc., but I don't want to leave a wrong impression.

C breaks the monochrome palette, and requires bringing in a midtone color in addition to b&w. Which is fine (and is imo the best looking example)... but not if you're set on a style that uses only black and white, so it's a work-around, rather than a solution.

D is... technically still using only black and white, but I'm honestly not a fan of using screentones in digital art (might be just personal taste, honestly), and it's also not as readable. Though the latter might be because the screentone I used isn't a particularly great example.

Keep in mind, all of these are my personal opinions, and I can't tell anyone which way is right or wrong.

[DiegoPalacios]

Personally, i agree with you and like option C more.

Option D, when looked up close gives a psychodelic vibe due to the unusual texture.

A seems more like an otherworldly entity due to the illusion of reverse colors and B just looks white.

[rajillustration]

Yeah, Charles Shulz is from a different era, and what was considered perfectly fine and progressive then is no longer the case. Most people would stray away from cross-hatching since it looks like hair. I think using a screen tone works pretty well, not one that is so dark we can't see features, but a mid-tone. Like if that's what they did on the Boondocks for forever, then I feel like that's a good bet.

But, while screen tone is hypothetically black and white, it's not, when you use it in web-comics because our resolution is so low. It'll look gray. But like...I think that's fine.

[djourner]

D reminds me of Gankutsuō
It's trippy as heck xD

[CodeMonkeyArts]

I use a mix of D and C and also use a lot of black ink shading as well. Using grayscale with black ink shadows is my preferred way of shading dark skin in black and white since it matches my style and also gives a good contrast between my black MC and some of my other characters.

Now you CAN do 1 depending on the art style; if your style emphasizes the physical features of a character, then you use that style: