Pawige: i'm familiar with Ron Lemen's lesson about skin tones, and with the basic "physics" going on and under the skin. You can see i've given the part that receives the most light a yellowed tone (a tone caucasian skin has, because of underlaying fat) and lower saturation caused by the direct light, and the midtones and dark shades are tinted towards red from light scattering under the surface and shining on blood and muscles under the skin layer.
Having said this, i don't think your edits are "realistic" at all, they head more towards a cartoon look. The first edit comes close, the lighter color conveys a good tanned feel, but not even red skinned people look like this (only if the lightsource was a setting sun). On the blue tintings on the darkest part, i assume these are secondary lightsources, they do bump up the other colors but in my original i was going for just one lightsource (i'll do more once i fell i have this thing under control). The second and third edits just feel totally off.
It's interesting that after looking at your edits, the lighter color i've used looks like a green, didn't look like that before.
Thanks for the critics.
Why wouldn't you "resort" to dithering?
I don't want to be limited to a single technique, i want options.
