Subscribe to our newsletter. The final details of this portrait of an African-American man. The darker the skin of your subject, the higher the contrast of your highlights.
Pure white can appear unrealistic.
Add a touch of cerulean blue to the highlights to make them more realistic. In Caucasians, the redness of the skin as it stretches across the cheekbones is fairly noticeable. That's because you're actually seeing the red of oxygenated blood through the semi-transparent skin as it stretches across the bone. While the effect is not as noticeable in darker skin, I applied a thin wash of vermilion in the cheekbone area. The beard .