I want to share the approach I use for painting skin tones, because it took me a long time to develop a reliable system and the internet is full of conflicting advice.

The foundational principle: skin tone is a property of the light, not of the person. The actual chromatic variation between skin tones — warm, cool, dark, light — is narrow compared to how differently the same skin looks under different light sources.

My workflow: I start with the overall light color and establish the skin tone within that context. For warm afternoon light, everyone looks warm-orange with cool shadows. For overcast midday light, everyone looks slightly cool-grey with warmer reflected shadows.

The specific technique: I don't use one skin-tone color. I use three — a warm midtone for the main body of the skin, a cooler and slightly more saturated highlight for the areas of direct light, and a warm-to-cool transition in the halftone (the transitional area between light and shadow). The halftone color variation is what creates the impression of live skin rather than painted plastic.