Marshmallow, Caramel, Cinnamon, Chocolate, Espresso (and Other Shades of Lovely)

The more I looked at the picture of Betty I put up the other day, the more it bugged me.  Her skin tone just didn't look... right to me.  It seemed too grayish, or maybe too greenish.  I'm not sure- maybe it's just because of the other colors I used in the image, but it got me to thinking that I really needed to make my own personal skin tone chart, just for quick reference.

See, skin tone has been on my brain quite a bit, lately, primarily because I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to make Pippa white.  Or, at least, not the glow-in-the-dark-Celtic-white my characters tend to be (see faces #2 and 3) (#1 is an albino).  Now, it is perfectly understandable that my characters are generally that pale- I'm that pale, especially after a PNW winter, so it's natural that my brain thinks of  "my" skin color as "default".  But... it's not default: I'm pretty solidly in the minority of skin tones.  There are approximately one bajillion other shades of pink and brown out there, and I'd like to write characters that take advantage of that, just as I write characters that have hair color other than blonde (the natural shade beneath all this dye).  This, of course, is a Dangerous Thing... it's a sad but true fact that authors can Get Into Trouble by writing outside their race, which I think is a damn shame, but then I'm a white girl so I might not get to have an opinion on that.  Anyway, in regards to Pippa I decided to take a baby step and make her father an African American (her mother being, for all intents and purposes, Celtic-style fae), which makes her a lovely cafe au lait baby, but more importantly carries with it the "mix-blood-who-truly-belongs-to-no-culture" theme which was already in the story- and so you see it wasn't entirely an arbitrary "I need to add some color up in here!" decision.  The next step is figuring out her hair, and as such  I've been spending a lot of time browsing through Women-of-Color Hair Blogs (and it's fascinating).  I'll let you know what I eventually decide... (it will keep the ginger-cast, tho': that's proof of fae heritage, in her world).