How do you color skin?

[BlackAndWhiteIsClassic]

I'm doing digital coloring, and I've been having a good time. However, I've had a lot of trouble with coloring skin, especially when it's other people's lineart. It just turns out looking blocky and fake, and...I dunno. D:
How do you guys handle it?

 

[Errol McGillivray]

I mostly do a psuedo cell shade. I have a base colour, a muted cool muted version, a warm mute, an a more saturated version. I play with these to make the shadow, midtone, and highlight areas. I don't really bother with reflected light from the environment though. Mostly because I to keep my work simple.  

[C r y o l i]

I usually start with the lightest shade as the base, then for shadows I pick darker colors from the base and work with it in different layers of course. In photoshop I usually just use the smudge brush to help with my skin shading.  

[Pepe Nameless]

I use watercolor.
With watercolor it's hard to color pale (white) skin because if done too light it doesn't scan well. I'm learning how to be more confident with it.  

[Yamiko]

I take the general skin tone and take a slightly darker shade with a hint of orange-reddish color.

With the darker shade, I take a low opacity brush and dab it over the general skin tone until I have the midtone skin color I want to use.

For highlights, I take a very light complementary color of the general skin tone and use very low opacity brushes over the areas I want to highlight.  

[Captain Kolita]

It really depends what your going for. Sometimes I like a super clean, almost plastic look, for chibis and very simplified manga art, and for that I use no blend, starting with a middle color then selecting with the lasso tool and filling in small highlights on the cheekbones. I also shade this way.

For more complicated, softer coloring I fill with the medium color, then keep the face or arms or whatever selected as I shade and highlight with a soft brush. The colors you select shouldn't just be a color lighter or darker than the medium shade, it should be cooler or warmer to reflect the surrounding light.

For complicated shading, like for low lighting or a sunsetty/dusky setting, I recommend washing an entire color in a light opacity over your picture. (Gray for low light, orange or red or whatever for a sunset and blue or green for dusk or nighttime outside) Then, you can erase bits of this wash to highlight, which makes the highlights seem super bright and intense, almost seeming to glow. Which is super cool, I love this effect. Xd

Example: http://harisaysmeh.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2v8x62
Other Example:
http://harisaysmeh.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d2uirea

In this part, though, you should have already colored the entire character, their personal shading (like where their hair naturally casts a shadow on their face) and highlights already done. Then, you can shade in a more gradient way, from the feet up or from one side, depending on where the light is coming from. The highlights (erasing of the wash) can splash on the side of them instead of in small contained areas because in atmospheric coloring like this the light source is typically pretty accented.

Wow that was long, sorry 'bout that. ^^'  

[Capitan Doggo]

try using different colors depending on the bg; blues, purples, greens, reds, yellows and browns are all in the skin if you look closely. Some people say to use complementary colors in the skin with dramatic lighting, though of course, use a low opacity brush while shading (:  

[x Varda x]

C r y o l i

I usually start with the lightest shade as the base, then for shadows I pick darker colors from the base and work with it in different layers of course. In photoshop I usually just use the smudge brush to help with my skin shading.

That's pretty much how I handle the matter.  

[Death Faust IX]

Gray it :"]
then use gradient map layer
experiment
hehe
I use this method for skin
when I'm using photoshop