I’ve seen a couple of posts in the last little while that deal with either accusations made against artists for whitewashing OCs, or dealing with colour theory and its application to painting skin. It’s true that skintones are incredibly difficult to nail properly, especially if you only have one or two reference pictures to work with. Most artists don’t whitewash intentionally, but if it happens to your commission, it’s a difficult conversation to have regardless. Canon characters aside, what I’m proposing is that if you are commissioning an artist to draw your OC, it might be helpful to use an established makeup shade to indicate the base colour of your OC.

The only reason I’m suggesting makeup specifically is that it’s easier to find a model wearing that makeup shade than it would be to use a colour code to indicate what skintone you would prefer. If you find a model wearing that shade, then you can send the artist a swatch or guide of the makeup to use as a base colour, and avoid miscommunication via reference pictures with varying lighting.

Model skintone reference (example):

Swatch/guide reference (example):

(These are both from Fenty, which is well-regarded as having an actually wide and accurate colour range, but correct me if I’m wrong)

Notice how the colour of the makeup that the model is wearing sometimes seems slightly darker than the model’s face as a result of the reflected light/highlights? I think that is one source of error that can arise from colour picking from a face. That being said, this doesn’t take into account different lighting, but it can help serve as a base to work around. It’s also important for artists to double check skintones with the client as they make progress.



As an example, I did this when I commissioned @hansaera​ for this piece - I told her Eli’s skintone is around a MAC NC35, and the piece came out perfectly.