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Description
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would take a seat and lend me some of your time If you don't, then pass the coming paragraph.

We all know how our own image is an issue in our society, might it be our background, studies, physical appearance...and what I want to talk about, ethnicity.
Once I bumped on this: [link] (linking a precise moment but you can watch all the preview if you want)
It really hit me. Not that I wasn't aware of "levels" of prettiness among black girls (for those who don't know, light dark girls being prettier than dark dark girls to sum it up). No it was this little girl voicing that the darkest girl was the ugliest and the dumbest, and the lightest the prettiest and the smartest. As if skin had something to do with it. Sure I had faced things like this, like wanting to be lighter to be prettier as a kid (and asking my mother why did she married a black man instead of a white man as my sis and I could have come out lighter) or people asking me if I didn't want to use products to have a lighter skin. It's really dumb, and insulting. But it's how society made us build our perception of ourselves: having white girls with light skin as a beauty canon in medias created a scale on which the lighter you are, the closer you are to the beauty canon. Anecdotic but a good example, also the reason why you see more mixed race people to represent black people, simply because they are the "lightened" version.

BUT. While everything I said has sadness and frustration on my own experience, it doesn't mean I hate lighter skins. It's not because one kind of beauty has been placed as the beauty canon that it should be hated. In my case, I like the skin of my grandmother, the rose pale skin with blue eyes of a 100% caucasian, as I love the olive skin of my mother, a mixed race. And as I loved the dark skin of my father, going on the ebony. I like the pale skin of my best friend, and the pale gold skin of my little sis of heart. They are different for sure, but each of them have a different beauty which shall be appreciated as they are, not by comparing them. All of them are beautiful, all of them.

TL;DR. It was just my two cents.

Now about the art properly. I made researches on different skin tones and I must admit, if I had put all of them it would have taken more space. (also just to tell, I'm not an expert, here is the mix of what I understood) Reduced them to 11, which go in 3 big categories: fair, medium, and dark.
In fair you have porcelain, rose pale, light and pale gold.
In medium, gold, olive, medium dark and native
In dark, dark, dark olive and ebony
They are big categories as well, some being either warm (gold, olive, dark olive,...) or cold (rose pale, ebony...) or more neutral (light, dark...) according to which I wanted to convey. Let's say it's more a reference for me to understand them. For example my skin is the same "light" as Medium Dark, but yellow like Dark olive plus a touch of gold making it looking like copper.And Medium Dark is Beyoncé
Fair skins are the big categories of white skin, pale gold and gold are the usual asian skin...as for native I call it like this but it can be middle-east, south asian, or native amercian skin, I admit I don't have a lot of knowledge on them but I didn't want to put them asides.
So I only put 11 of them, 11 symbol of infinite for me. They are so many of skin tones (and let's not talk about hair and other features), but I will try to use them more often in my work now that I made this reference sheet.

WONDERFUL STOCK REFERENCE I USED: [link] by *LaLunatique

Sources used to pick colors:
[link] [link] by ~navate
[link] [link] [link]

Art (c) =NeipyPien

Description
Ladies and gentlemen, if you would take a seat and lend me some of your time If you don't, then pass the coming paragraph.

We all know how our own image is an issue in our society, might it be our background, studies, physical appearance...and what I want to talk about, ethnicity.
Once I bumped on this: [link] (linking a precise moment but you can watch all the preview if you want)
It really hit me. Not that I wasn't aware of "levels" of prettiness among black girls (for those who don't know, light dark girls being prettier than dark dark girls to sum it up). No it was this little girl voicing that the darkest girl was the ugliest and the dumbest, and the lightest the prettiest and the smartest. As if skin had something to do with it. Sure I had faced things like this, like wanting to be lighter to be prettier as a kid (and asking my mother why did she married a black man instead of a white man as my sis and I could have come out lighter) or people asking me if I didn't want to use products to have a lighter skin. It's really dumb, and insulting. But it's how society made us build our perception of ourselves: having white girls with light skin as a beauty canon in medias created a scale on which the lighter you are, the closer you are to the beauty canon. Anecdotic but a good example, also the reason why you see more mixed race people to represent black people, simply because they are the "lightened" version.

BUT. While everything I said has sadness and frustration on my own experience, it doesn't mean I hate lighter skins. It's not because one kind of beauty has been placed as the beauty canon that it should be hated. In my case, I like the skin of my grandmother, the rose pale skin with blue eyes of a 100% caucasian, as I love the olive skin of my mother, a mixed race. And as I loved the dark skin of my father, going on the ebony. I like the pale skin of my best friend, and the pale gold skin of my little sis of heart. They are different for sure, but each of them have a different beauty which shall be appreciated as they are, not by comparing them. All of them are beautiful, all of them.

TL;DR. It was just my two cents.

Now about the art properly. I made researches on different skin tones and I must admit, if I had put all of them it would have taken more space. (also just to tell, I'm not an expert, here is the mix of what I understood) Reduced them to 11, which go in 3 big categories: fair, medium, and dark.
In fair you have porcelain, rose pale, light and pale gold.
In medium, gold, olive, medium dark and native
In dark, dark, dark olive and ebony
They are big categories as well, some being either warm (gold, olive, dark olive,...) or cold (rose pale, ebony...) or more neutral (light, dark...) according to which I wanted to convey. Let's say it's more a reference for me to understand them. For example my skin is the same "light" as Medium Dark, but yellow like Dark olive plus a touch of gold making it looking like copper.And Medium Dark is Beyoncé
Fair skins are the big categories of white skin, pale gold and gold are the usual asian skin...as for native I call it like this but it can be middle-east, south asian, or native amercian skin, I admit I don't have a lot of knowledge on them but I didn't want to put them asides.
So I only put 11 of them, 11 symbol of infinite for me. They are so many of skin tones (and let's not talk about hair and other features), but I will try to use them more often in my work now that I made this reference sheet.

WONDERFUL STOCK REFERENCE I USED: [link] by *LaLunatique

Sources used to pick colors:
[link] [link] by ~navate
[link] [link] [link]

Art (c) =NeipyPien