Prismacolor easy skin tone tutorial

Over the weekend I spent a large amount of time working on one of my art midterms. During the process I felt it would be a good opportunity to make a small tutorial out of it. In this tutorial I used Prismacolor pencils (set of 48), a mechanical pencil and a kneaded rubber eraser. I hope you find this tutorial helpful! Enjoy!

Step 1: First thing I did was draw a sketch. After drawing the sketch I used my kneaded rubber eraser and dabbed at the lines until they were substantially lighter. This can be done with a regular eraser.

Step 2: When coloring anything whether it be in black or white or color I like to start with a base color. Starting with a base color makes it easier to add colors and blend. The color I picked for my base was "Light Peach". I went with a very light color because I wanted her to have very fair skin. Again if you want a tan look all you would have to to do is use a darker color. It's also important to remember to shade lightly and not to add too much pressure on the pencil. 

Step 3: The next few steps I use slightly darker shades to enhance her face and shaded areas. As you can see in this step I used the color "Goldenrod"(yellowish brown) under the hair, under her neck, around her cheeks, the nose and eye area. Again I'm not putting a lot of pressure on the pencil just lightly shading. 

Step 4: Because I don't want her face to look too yellow I picked a pink color(Peach) and went over the shaded area like in step 3. 

Step 5: Using the same color as in step 3 (Goldenrod) I went over the shaded areas yet again but this time putting slightly more pressure on the areas I wanted to shade even darker. You can see these areas would be right under the hair, eyes and neck areas. 

Step 6: Here I did the same exact thing that I did in step five except with an even darker brown color (Burnt Ochre).

Step 7: Time to make things really pop! This is usually my favorite part of coloring, when you get to see your drawing come to life. For the even darker shading I used one of my all time favorite colored pencils, "Tuscan Red". For the eyes I picked two blues, one light colored and one dark colored (Light Cerulean Blue and Violet Blue). I started with the lighter color as a base then went over with the darker blue on the top of the eye leaving the bottom a lighter color. I didn't add pupils because I wanted her to have a dazed expression on her face, but if you wanted to add you would add now.

Step 8: Time to give this girl some lips! Again I start with a light pink base color (seeing a pattern here?).

Step 9: Darkening the sides of her lips I went over lightly with "Mulberry" and then went a bit harder at the very sides of her lips and center. 

Step 10: Using "Tuscan Red" I darken the very edges of the mouth and the very center. I used "Blush Pink" to highlight the top and bottom of her lip. The brown color "Burnt Ochre" was used to shade around her mouth.

Wasn't that easy? Once you get used to this process you can go on coloring just about anything. If you want to color a more sickly looking face all you would have to do is incorporate more blues instead of pinks and yellows. For a darker skin tone more browns instead of pinks. Whatever skin tone i'm painting I usually pick around two light, medium and dark colors. 

Here's the end result after adding eyelashes and hair color. One of my favorite things about Prismacolor is how the blending of many colors looks so eye catching. Her hair wasn't difficult to do at all. I started with a light blue base color then using long strokes went darker and darker leaving the highlighted areas alone.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! Have fun drawing!