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I have a number of folks who aren't beige in my current novel and I'm trying to come up with more precise yet poetic names for the skin tones.

Is there a glossary of the skin tone spectrum ranging from albino to blue-black?

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Look to make up:

Call it cheesy, but makeup companies spend a lot of time and money and effort to catalog and categorize skin color so they can market the right matching makeup to the right client worldwide. There are thousands of websites that go into great depth on this subject. Here is one with a 20-point system that is semi-neutral from a marketing perspective.

Just google skin color chart, and you'll get hundreds of examples. The names may not be consistent 100% from site to site, but you're looking for inspiration more than perfect accuracy. There won't be one universal, but the closest to scientific is the Fitzpatrick scale. A good discussion for the nature and origins of skin tone is on Wikipedia. enter image description here enter image description here enter image description here

DWKraus
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