Razz's Rough Guide to Selecting Good Reference Photos for Darker Skin (and how to color pick without being Racist about it)
Say you're an artist, and you want to learn how to draw/paint and render darker skin. If you just type in 'dark skin reference' into your search engine, you're likely to get a range of photos that range from mid-toned skintones to some darker skintones, but notably a lot of the photos of those darker skinned individuals will... not exactly be the best photos in the world.
It's not as simple as just color-picking skin in a photograph and calling it a day. You need to do so with intention. And you need to be selective in what you gather for your reference materials, because color picking from a bad photo versus a good photo will make a world of difference.
Racism, Colorism, and Anti-Blackness are a big component to this discussion. More under the read more.
If you want other resources that give tips and info about rendering and lighting on dark skin and how to avoid whitewashing and caricatures, I recommend looking at some of these various links to resources here.
Racism and Colorism are ingrained in everything, including art-forms like painting and photography. Photography has a history of colorism and anti-blackness. If you're interested in the history, there are a few articles and some videos I recommend as a taste tester about it. Here is a short video by Vox about the subject in regards to Kodak color film.
Even though technology has advanced to better accommodate varying skintones in photography, that doesn't mean that the long-standing racial bias has disappeared. The bias towards whiteness is deep, and often unconsciously perpetuated, so that even programs such as facial recognition software will struggle to identify a darker skinned person versus a lighter skinned person.
Modern day photography can still replicate the biased conditions of old film photography if the photographer is not mindful of their subject.
When looking for reference material, you will encounter both good and bad photos. Even if a photo by white standards has good lighting and technique, if the photographer or editor don't adjust the parameters to accommodate for darker skin, they can fall into many pitfalls.
The model's skin can be underexposed, flat, over-exposed, or washed out and gray. The photographer could over-emphasize the contrast so that the skin has overly bright reflections and shadows that swallow the rest of their face. They could be flattened so that only one or two hues of their skintone show through, while the rest disappear. They could be de-saturated so that all the richness and depth of their undertones are lost, and the model's skin becomes charcoal-like and ashy.
Often photographers will do grayscale photos of darker skinned subjects, as if to avoid having to deal with the problem of color adjustment in the first place. Sure, the grayscale can better capture the values of their skin, but it can still fall into the pitfalls of underexposure or washing them out.
So, given this knowledge that photography is susceptible to racial bias and can be done badly, how do we determine 'good' photos versus 'bad' photos of a darker skinned person (at least when it comes to looking for photo references)? What makes a good and bad photo is subjective, but these are my takes.
I'll take an example of a dark skinned model - in this case Khoudia Diop - and present some examples of what a 'bad' photograph of her can look like. These would be the types of photos to avoid using as reference for what darker skin actually looks like.
The first example ie the top left image of her is balanced to show the white detail of her outfit, but not at all balanced to show the detail of her face and skintone, and so her face and skin and hair are totally underexposed and flattened. The reflection of light on her face overly pops out like a bright light in a sea of under-exposed dark muddied features that blend into each other.
The second example in the top row completely de-saturates her face, giving her a gray-ish ashy charcoal-like tone to her skin, completely obscuring whatever undertones she may have. It looks deliberate, in contrast to the noticeable yellowed tone of her light colored outfit.
The third example in the top row places her in a white patterned outfit in front of a stark white background, that completely flattens her features into one or two hues, while the highlights and whites of her teeth stand out starkly as if in a void of under-detailed flattened brown.
The fourth example uses contrast to its detriment, leading to the shadows becoming too dark so that her features blend into the shadows; the corners of her mouth just fade into the darkness with hard to see boundaries. The highlights and reflections of light on her face give an almost ashy appearance.
The fifth example has her standing in a bikini, and while the lighting is not bad, the white lighting and editing drains away the variance of depth in her skin, making it all look like the same undertone almost as if painted on, when in reality bodies can greatly vary in undertone and depth of richness from one part of the body to another.
The sixth and last example of a 'bad' photo has her in a stark white outfit in front of black background, and whatever the hell is going on with the lighting on her face makes her look washed out and ashy.
Okay, so those are all examples of 'bad' photos. So what does a 'good' photo for photo reference look like?
Here are some examples I picked, of the same model, that I would consider 'good' photos to use as reference when you're trying to effectively depict darker skintones.
All four of these photos are nicely exposed and balanced so that none of her features are overly flattened or washed out. The undertone and depth of her skintone is on display in multiple locations, and the whites of her eyes and highlights of her skin are not so stark as to overtake the rest of her face. The reflectiveness of her skin is used to emphasize her facial structure without completely washing out the rest of her skintone. The white lighting used utilizes the reflective nature of her skin without overly coloring it reflect the environment.
These are good photos to use as photo reference. They have the model in neutral lighting, so that the skintone is not distorted by vibrant colors reflecting off the skin. Vibrant lighting can be useful, but if you want a more objective view of skintone, it is best to use neutral lighting.
Okay, so we have a metric of what a decent reference photo can look like, now how do we use the reference photo to color pick a skintone?
There are good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. The bad ways are often done maliciously by people who want to whitewash on purpose. Let's start with the bad.
Say this image below is our photo reference. Pretty decent, right? The lighting is neutral white, nothing is over or under-exposed, the variance of her undertones are on display, and the reflections of the lighting on her face isn't too glaring. How could someone possibly muck up using this for reference?
I shall show you some of the ways someone may take an ostensibly good reference photo, and color pick ignorantly or maliciously from it.
So if those are the ways you SHOULDN'T color pick for a dark skinned ref image, how SHOULD you do it instead? Here's how!
If you put all these tips into practice, you'll likely have a much better time picking good reference material and color picking from aforementioned reference material.
But what if the artwork you're doing has dramatic lighting? How would that affect darker skin? I'm glad you asked!
Dark skin is reflective! Light bounces off dark skin in beautiful ways! Check out how vibrant lighting bounces off the skin of these models from the Afro Hair Index!
Whatever tones and hues the skin usually has will get tinted to reflect whatever lighting hits that skin. If you shine a blue light, all the highlights will be blue.
When it comes to studying how light interacts with skin, photos like these are great! They are not exactly good metrics for determining the base skin color outside of that dramatic lighting, however. If you want to render skin that's not affected by tinted lighting, it is best to use reference photos in neutral/white lighting.
I encourage anyone that wants to get better at rendering skin to do some studies of good photos, figure out how that light interacts with the skin, how the shadows and highlights bounce around the image, how different lighting and exposure affects the flatness or variance of values of the skin. It's a great way to level up your understanding as an artist!
It is up to our discernment and personal tastes what we decide as 'good' or 'bad' reference photos, but ultimately I hope this can help people find better material to work with instead of settling for the first image they find even if it's less than ideal.
(Thank you to my friends who helped me as I made this guide! Much love to @pleasantvoidphantom especially)
