Hello.

As a newbie in trying to use Photoshop to draw characters I'm finding one of the most challenging tasks at hand to be figuring out how to master the art of skin tone on human characters.  I've seen several videos on youtube with various techniques but none so far yield the results I'm looking for.  Some go over using the smudge tool to color blend 2 shades together to cause a somewhat gradiant effect. Others may use a base darker shade on the whole character then just soft brush over the dark areas with a lighter shade to represent the lighted areas, etc. Some videos reveal the brushes used and others seem to keep them secrete. I'm sure I need more practice but I'm somewhat frustrated to not be getting that natural soft blending of skin tone with different shades of the same color. 

If anyone can point out some good videos or tutorials of some type to follow I'd really appreciate it. 

In the past, I worked with 3d models and apparantly that is somewhat easier because in a 3d model I can have a single texture of skin on a person and allow the 3d software to do the work of casting shadows and increased light on the proper areas of skin due to scene lamps. Trying to do this in Photoshop is rather tough LOL.  But I'm motiviated because some of the best most natural looking humans I've seen were created and painted with Photoshop according to ImagineFX Magazine.

So any useful tutorials anyone can point out would really be great. Thanks in advance.