Generally what you're looking for in skin color is a low-chroma orange. Depending on the person, it will swing a little towards red or yellow and up or down slightly in chroma, but will generally be low-chroma orange. This is true even for darker skin colors. One of the first things to watch for is distinguishing highlights from form lights. Things can be really confusing when you can't tell if a light area is a highlight or a form light. This is one of the main challenges when working from photos—it can be hard to tell what's a highlight. From life it's easy—you just move a bit, and if the light moves with you, it's a highlight. In highlights, the chroma will drop even lower (assuming a white or whiteish light). Highlights usually have a core area that's lighter than the other parts and closer to the color of the light, and a darker transition area that's closer to the value and hue of the object. The chroma of this transition highlight will be higher than the core highlight, but lower than the chroma of the object. The next thing to look for is higher chroma in the lights—but *only with form lights*. Highlights lose chroma as they get lighter. For form lights, more light = more chroma. So, as the form turns away from the light, it will lose chroma slightly as it also loses value. The shadow areas will be even lower chroma. So, the light-most-facing plane (LMFP) will be the highest chroma, and the form shadow will be the lowest chroma (starting at the terminator). Capturing the diminishing of chroma along with the diminishing of light can make things look real and full of light. A good trick is that the area of the form light that is most facing to the light (the light-most-facing plane or LMFP) will usually be right near the highlight. It'll be on the side furthest from the viewer. This will be the highest chroma, but darker in value than the highlight. You ultimately end up with a hierarchy that looks like this: - Light-most-facing plane = highest chroma, third-highest value - Core highlight = lowest chroma, highest value - Transition highlight = second-lowest chroma, second highest value - Form shadow = third-lowest chroma, lowest value I attached some diagrams and a paintover to hopefully help illustrate