Where can I find a list of skin color names? There's gotta be something more detailed than just night, porcelain, cadaver, and peach, kickin' around.
I think, Brazil, (?), at some point had a partial list. Other countries will/might have their own, I suppose.
Sure useful, in composing a painting, choosing colors to make up faces is an important necessity, especially if we want the painting to be realistic: :-| .
What thing is called as 'skin-colour' in my oil-pastel box surprised me because it was white+orange (later I knew it matches Europeans' skin's colour whereas we were brown.)
However its etymology is just tradition, and I think anyone shouldn't take it in sensible way. Its just as simple.
Artists are usually never obsessed with packaging-name of the colour... but they show obsession to the look or sense of the shade of colour. They effortlessly imitate a natural-colour by mixing more than one colors in their palette... just on eye-gaze.
If you want to make the proper shade of someone's skin's colour; you could try different available shades of yellows, browns, oranges, reds, whites, blacks, greys or even little proportion of greens or blues may require.
As some hints, could use ochre-yellow, burnt sienna, raw umber, crimson-red, scarlette red, gamboge yellow etc. from your colour-set, in proportions as required.
P. S.
Even if the colour-shade varies from country to country/ brand to brand/ medium-to-medium; the difference is probably not so drastic . For say if you get 2 shades of yellow ochre; possibly the different is not so drastic that one is totally brown and another is totally yellow. With slight color-mixing the desired shade could be easily derived. Seemingly you could easily do that, (because since you're using oil-painting that means previously you've learned drawing many years with someother media).
More-over, if you have the accurate shade that matches to desired-one's skin; still you have to mix some-other colour since you want 'realistic' thing. To make the dark, bright and highlighted portions of the picture of same-person; you must need mix colour in complex way otherwise everything will look flat.
I'm not entirely sure what your question is asking, but if you want names for different colors of skin tone, this website and this website have some names you might be interested in.
However, looking at the tags on your question, it seems like what you want is colors of art media, whether it be oil-paint, colored pencils, chalk, or oil pastels. In that case, I would recommend mixing colors instead of trying to find media that matches your desired color exactly. To get a skin tone, I would recommend mixing any combination of brown, "peach", orange, red, yellow, or any other colors you want. This will allow you to more closely match the color you have in your mind. For each medium, there are different strategies for mixing colors, but that's a completely different question.
Color has no name. I painted portraits for more than a decade, so skin is kinda a familiar subject for me. Anyway, I have made several very indepth videos on the subject of color theory for painters.
This is the one that I think speaks more specifically to your question: color has no name
This video is a brief overview on the concept of color (from the perspective of an artist). Other videos in the collection deal specificaly with color theory, paint mixing, and common misconceptions among artists regarding such things. But this particular video deals with "the color of skin" in particular, as well as the matter of available paint color options found in art supply stores.
The short video is of me talking about this subject. The only way that I can "sum up" this very short video is:
However, if I'm going to sit here and type it all up anyway, I might as well take the opportunity to elaborate on the "why" no skintone is consistent?
It's because all skin is translucent to some degree. The cartilage, musculature, and blood all contribute to the color we see at the surface of the skin. However, the video actualy takes the time to demonstrate the subject of light, and adjacent objects, whuch I can not do here in writing. I hope that helps.
You could be creative and use cosmetic product names as a guide and then mix your colours to match. Having said that though, take foundation as an example, Clarins uses descriptions like honey, wheat, cappuccino, sand etc. to describe, what in their opinion, skin tones look like. Language, race and cultural issues I think would create sensitivity around naming skin colour in a literal way.
