If you have really dark skinned characters, how do you keep their features from being washed out

[thepenmonster]

@Leyelle, are you black or know any black people? I'm going to assume no since you're having this problem, but getting advice from your subjects is usually good advice.

Practically speaking- Find some books on the subject. Malik Shabazz (Not the hotep guy) had a very well regarded art book called How To Draw Black People some years back.

I just did a search for it on Amazon, home of undercutting the competition, but it was over $100. This suggests to me that it's out of print now. I couldn't find it on his website either. Might be worth asking your local library about it.

Personally speaking- There's skin tone and there's skin tone manipulated for media.

I'm assuming Nyakim Gatwech is the inspiration for wanting a very dark skinned character. It might help to realize that a lot of photos of her are Photoshopped to exaggerate her features, like with all models. Wikipedia has a photo of her under normal lighting conditions you might want to look at. She's lovely naturally and her skin tone is good for manipulating into something striking, but it's still manipulated and thus, unreal.

What I'm getting at is that you can have a dark-skinned character with clear features without them being, well, drow from D&D.

I now see this was covered but it bears repeating.

I'm sorry, but that skin color is just too dark for its context. =/ There's no way around it.

Unless you're making a drow, or even Mr. Popo. But those both require a far different approach.

BTW, my advice for anyone reading this post for drawing Mr. Popo is pretend you never heard of this character before and never will hear of it in the future.

[Leyelle]

You just need to hoan your artistic discipline. That will happen with the willingness to experiment and see what works/doesn't work.

that's the goal though lol, i was asking for advice so that i can try what people are suggesting in order to improve my art. I have no intention to stay stagnant, i just need to know where to start

[Leyelle]

excuse me, but i'm going to have to disagree with a portion of your statement. This character is not a caricature by any stretch of the imagination, i'm a black woman myself, and wanting to express the beauty of my diaspora. No, I do not have the skills to execute this properly yet, but that does not detract from the point that this characters complexion is a beautiful and INTENTIONAL choice, however (currently) poorly executed.

@Leyelle, are you black or know any black people? I'm going to assume no since you're having this problem, but getting advice from your subjects is usually good advice.

I am in fact black, actually, i'm just trying to improve a skill set i don't have yet.

[Leyelle]

thank you so much, this is really helpful XD

[Leyelle]

i was literally planning to look up Nyakim Gatwech today cuz she's a huge inspo to me XD

[thepenmonster]

I am in fact black

Great! Grab your camera and take some shots of your arm under different lighting conditions. Then grab the eyedropper tool in your art software and start sampling and making swatches. Once you get a decent range of colours to work from you can start expanding and experimenting from there until you get some skin tones you can live with.

[NickRowler]

Dude, not all black people have the same skin color.

@Leyelle Is obviously trying to depict people who have darker skin, maybe even more so than her own.

like Sanegalese

Or South Sudanese

[Leyelle]

yes, actually, that was a really good guess. my two female leads i'm struggling with are Senegalese and Cameroonian (with Melanism). I can draw the women with my complexion pretty decently enough XD

[AmysGames]

i do understand the sentiment of lightening a color since the lineart has to be readable but my issue is when it comes at the expense of killing the saturation and making darker skin tones look grey. which isn't to say those shades dont exist but they also don't always look the best depending on how it's painted

In hindsight I will say that my comment about desaturating nighttime scenes could probably be taken out of context; I agree that making dark skin look gray is probably not the right choice. I just meant that there are techniques to making colors look darker without having to make it invisible on certain screens.

The references from @theyrebothakilogram's post are a great example. All of them read as very dark, but I can still see them on my monitor, because the artists were able to utilize techniques that make the colors look darker without using a shade at 7% brightness.

But I'm white as a sheet with not as much experience drawing darker skintones, so that's about as much as I can say on the topic, lol.

[thepenmonster]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[VibrantFox]

which is totally fair and why i'd hoped to add some more artists i know of who also accomplish this with their styles

like one of my absolute faves recently has been rockybloo especially their comics beanstalked and glitter an guilt since you can see darker skin tones used not just in standalone illustrations but full comic scenes and they still look great and read well

Beanstalked

Glitter and Guilt

[theyrebothakilogram]

characters complexion is a beautiful and INTENTIONAL choice

This is true, and I think most people agree with you, they're just trying to say is that it doesn't read the way you're meaning it too

most of these characters read very well as dark skinned characters like you're going for, but you see their color choice is very different from yours, and you can see something similar when you color pick from real people too
I included the unedited and edited photos of nyakim gatwech. and I think I see your vision (let me know if I'm wrong) the skin tone you selected it very similar to the color on Nyakim Gatwech's cheekbone

the only problem with this is that it's from the part of her face thats in shadow, for a style like yours I recommend selecting a color from the nose/forehead region because they tend to have less highlights/lowlights. you can see the same thing on white people where you don't want to select the shadow region because it will read very differently

heres what you character would look like if you sample one of the references color palates (I also desaturated to teal a little to make it easier to see)

and here's what your character would look like if we sample Nyakim Gatwetch's color palette

I hope this helps, we're not telling you to change your characters complexion, just trying to find a better color to represent the skin tone you're going for if that makes any sense. Do you have a picture or reference of the look you're going for?

[abigaillmartin]

Whew! Nice recovery! I think I should keep these just in case!

this is really really helpful dude!

[DokiDokiTsuna]

This character is not a caricature by any stretch of the imagination

...I never said they were... ._.
I said the fact that their face is almost invisible will make them LOOK like a caricature, or at least feel like one. The average viewer isn't going to know that you just had poorly-executed good intentions...the fact remains that it's kind of a wacky-looking mistake that a lot of people might give the side-eye.

If you've seen how black people have historically been portrayed in cartoons and anime, you shouldn't be surprised by this...and again, I wasn't trying to accuse you of anything; I was just illustrating the degree of the error. =T Some people DO need to be told/warned; I had no way of knowing whether you were aware or not.

[Leyelle]

Do you have a picture or reference of the look you're going for?

Yeah, this was my goal. And also, thank you for all your help and tips, it makes a lot of sense.

My goal is definitely to improve so the characters can be represented the best way possible. I think I just have a tendency to be hyper-sensitive, since it's very important to me that dark-skinned girls get their chance to shine

[Leyelle]

Alright, that makes sense. Maybe i'm hyper-sensitive. I know I have a tendency to get touchy about the lack of representation of dark-skinned queenies in the media, so I may have misunderstood your statement.

[NickRowler]

A good thing to practice as an artist is to view an image on your phone vs how it might look on a desktop. It might also be worth going into setting on your computer and making sure you are using a proper color balance.

I edited the image on the left to show how it appears on my phone and why some people might be a bit shocked about why her skin is so dark.

The image on the right is me using your photo reference to pick a skin color for her.

[Leyelle]

yeah, i realized when i switched to a computer that the colors don't show the way they do on my tablet lol

[Leyelle]

(there's a subtle edit between the first and second version)

Alright, following lots of the advice people have given me, can someone, or everyone tell me, on your personal devices, are her features visible?

[AmysGames]

It's better than the first one, however, still pretty hard to see for me.