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I've seen a lot of discussion around rendering darker skin tones, so I wanted to share some great tutorials and resources from incredible artists who really know their stuff. Here's a great one that highlights just how reflective darker skin can be: muddycolors.com/2016/12/skin-t… 
Here's a short part 2 to that one: muddycolors.com/2017/01/portra… It's really important to start with the basics when you're working in color: value, hue, and saturation. learn.leighcotnoir.com/artspeak/eleme… If you're a beginner, it's much easier to tackle those one at a time instead of all at once.
I'd start with value first. Imo, it's the most important element in color: muddycolors.com/2015/08/value-… And on top of that, you can ADD color later to black and white/greyscale images! muddycolors.com/2017/03/applyi… If your values are solid, hue and saturation will easily fall into place.
I've seen a lot of generalizations about using specific colors when rendering darker skin tones, and I think we all need to remember that Color Is Relative. muddycolors.com/2014/03/skin-t… Warm light, cool light, time of day, environment, etc—it all factors in. You can't just color drop.
Even if your goal isn't to create photo realistic art, you're generally still going to want to have a harmonious color palette, and that means that whatever skin tone your subject has, it will be effected by the other colors surrounding it: howardlyon.com/blog/2012/09/2…
Even if you're going for basic local color and a non-realistic style, it's always worth considering value, hue, and saturation. Loish has a really great basic "drawing a female face" tutorial here that includes a section on shading skin: deviantart.com/loish/art/tuto…
This video is not specifically about dark skin, but it does touch on some important color theory considerations as well as the element of translucency: vimeo.com/52115888 See also; Creating Realistic Lighting Conditions: muddycolors.com/2018/07/creati…
Here's a great one from HanJihye that touches on skin undertones: deviantart.com/hanjihye/art/S… and an addition to it after a user question: deviantart.com/hanjihye/art/F…
Lastly, here are a couple videos that are really worth watching. Understanding Color (general color theory): and Painting African Skin Tones (process and color mixing example):
I hope this was helpful! I understand being frustrated by artists who intentionally whitewash canonically dark skinned characters, but many are still new and learning (unfortunately, in public) and parsing resources can be confusing if you don't already have some base knowledge.
Here's a nice thread that touches on considering historical context before jumping into stylization from @deluxepeach:
Another very short and sweet thread on the importance of understanding relative value: And I want to stress this one equally for artists learning how to work in color as well as fandoms that want to assign a literal hex code to some character's skintones.
In order to stylize or simplify dark skinned characters, we as artists must first understand how dark skin behaves in reality. The best way to study that is by comparing photos of the same model in different lighting conditions. I pulled some photos of Grace Bol to demonstrate:
Last thing: Dark skin is not inherently more difficult to understand or to paint than any other skin tone. Learning any new art skill is hard and requires practice to master. An artist who has only ever painted landscapes isn't going to automatically be a master at portraits.
When it comes to depicting POC, it's necessary to consider that there is a long history of extremely hurtful depictions ranging from careless to outright racist, which is why it's not only important for artists to practice our technical skills, but also our social awareness.
I have tried my best to keep this thread more focused on the technical aspects of rendering and color theory because as a non-black POC, I need to defer to black folks on issues of black representation, and it should be stated that just learning how to color is Not Enough.
The best education you can get on how black folks feel about their own representation is currently being offered for free by those very people on this website, and the best way to learn is to follow, listen to, and support them directly. You can start here: #drawingwhileblack
