I think I've messed up her skin. :/

So I think I've messed up her skin, it's really muddy, grey and dark. I really should have done it earlier, and done more tests and practised...I might be able to save it but it's disheartening to have to fight with so late in...and her shawl still needs fixed somehow too. 

The above picture's a really bad example for how it looks, with the camera's flash on the painting it actually looks okay. When I saw that though it did help me realise one of the problems... different arias are lit differently and I'm not sure which way to go. It's a fight between realistic and stylised really. In a dark forest with a one light source point of the lantern you would have the dark shadows on her face and the shawl but I'm not sure if I want to commit to that realism, it would take away any of the stylised-ness I was hoping for and it's not quite my tastes and doesn't fit the mood either...making it much more spooky.... I was going for serene. The under lit face might not help much there....

I guess I'll need to work this out tomorrow. 

So what I've actually done...

yesterday I did all the gems in the orange arias, a mix f purple and green ones. I'll add the gold in around them later when other arias are ready for gold as well, since it takes a bit of work to mix and can't really be reused if I make too much. 

I added the glow to the lantern, braking my colour palette to add some Winsor yellow since Naples yellow light is...wrong, in so many ways. below is the colour test I did first, at least this is working out. 

I did a range of skin tone tests following this rather good

 youtube tutorial by Danica Sills (just getting into her art by the way) and came out with a lot of different skin tones, I ended up going with the second last right one on the top row and I think that might have been my problem, it was just too cool and even though I wanted that I shouldn't have done a wash of it over her skin aria first...
Anyway, it's interesting just how many different base skin tones you can get from mixing alizarin crimson, indigo and Winsor yellow (again I wanted to avoid the Naples yellow, so her skin wouldn't be too similar to the front of her dress.)

And then you can get even more just by switching the indigo for Payne’s grey and Prussian blue....so many skin tones, just need to learn how to use them. I'm tempted to do something like in the YouTube video of painting over the same face with different skin tones.

I also toned down her hair a little.