I need help with greyscale and pale skin

[Yuurena]

That makes a lot of sense. The technique I am using is not my own, I've seen Marc Brunet doing it in one of his tutorials (you can watch it here if you're interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wvng0oPkNy4)
Though, this "lock transparent pixels" option is quite interesting. I am using Paint Tool Sai, do you know if it's available there? Again I couldn't thank y'all enough. this is life-saving xD

[PaperHearts]

I'm glad it helped. I ended up adjusting both to try and meet the saturation level in the middle. You're getting a lot of great advice in this thread, so I'm sure you'll be able to get some great results from now on!

[Yuurena]

Indeed! and I am extremely grateful for it! I'll make sure to put it into good use

[rajillustration]

Oh, I thought you were using Clip, my bad. So I looked it up, and in SAI it's a button called "preserve opacity"

they're doing it on linework, but it would work on a grayscale layer as well, so long as the white is transparent and not white. Good luck with the art!

[Yuurena]

Wonderful! Thank you loads

[euzalea]

I recommend checking this out, the character they're drawing is pale-skinned and they usually begin in greyscale and adding color later on - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmBpkHiNBaE&t=323s (they do have english subtitles)

[Pandastrophic]

Hey i dont know if someone suggested this already since i didnt read every reply but this is something i do sometimes:
- shade in grey scale, set this layer to multiply
- new layer above the grey scale layer, set this layer to Overlay then clip it to the grey scale layer
- place any colour there, shades of brown work pretty well as shading.

Example:
Just grey scale

Grey scale with overlay layer in brown:

(Sorry if the imgs are unclear, i took a photo of my ipad)

[jermajay]

I'm pretty sure you've already got your answer but another way you could do things is by making your greyscale transparent, colouring the greyscale, and then adding colours underneath. Kienan Lafferty makes a tutorial on doing this, I think it's called Sketch Lifting or something.