Painting skin tones can be a challenge. I find most of the bottled acrylic flesh tones artificial looking. They have too much of a pink or peach tone to them. Two that I do like are Delta’s Fleshtone & Dresden Flesh. For basing I’ll mix them with titanium white to lighten, then use the straight color for shading.

One of my favorite light skin tone mixes is titanium white + raw sienna. Using an old brush for mixing the paint, I add a dab of raw sienna & mix until I’m happy with the shade. By adding the raw sienna in tiny amounts I can be sure of not making the mix too dark. If I need a slightly pinker tone, I will add a tiny touch of cadmium red medium or napthol red light.

To paint darker skin tones, I have 3 mixes that can be used depending on the tone I need. The mixes are made with raw sienna, burnt sienna and burnt umber. When mixed equally with titanium white they produce nice brown flesh tones. I use these mixes as the base color, then add some more titanium white to the original mix to create the highlight color. Shading colors can be made by adding a little more of the brown pigment used to create the mix.  

If you look at the painted samples you will see the difference in tone produced by the 3 different browns.

The raw sienna mix has a slight yellow cast to it. The burnt sienna mix has a slightly reddish cast. The burnt umber has a neutral cast. You can enhance or play down these casts by adding other colors to these basic mixes. Try adding a tiny touch of cadmium red medium to the raw sienna mix or a touch of cadmium yellow medium to the burnt sienna mix. A small amount of ultramarine blue will cool your mix if it is too warm.Experiment a little! Play with your pigments & have fun.