Flesh in the Night

[Senira]

I'm working on an image of a procession in the night. The problem I face, as I do with all night pieces, is what tones to use for shading the skin.

http://www.angelfire.com/anime3/sailorstar3/allsoulsrough.txt

I know that everything at night gains a bluish shadow, but in this case there are torch/lantern bearing kids at intervals between the dancers. Would this give the shadows a more bluish-purple tone, or should it still be blue?

Also, though you can't see it in this section of the picture, the moon is shining in the upper right hand corner. I know that the moon creates icy blue highlights, but I can't seem to get all the colors to work together without getting all muddled.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I don't want to put any more work into the shading until I understand how it works. There are nine figures in this image, and I'd be greatly annoyed if they all turned out horribly wrong.

[dogfood]

Go monochrome with blue only, sparing the highlights. Then introduce only the colors that would be reflected (there are few). But first, I would really tie up the poses and anatomy. The figures look very stiff.

[Senira]

Thank you! I noticed that a lot of the figures were kind of stiff looking for dancers, but I didn't have a good reference to go on. Seeing as how my main computer was murdered only a few short hours ago, I'll have plenty of time to fix them while the manufacturer sends us a system recovery disk. *sighs*