I try to remain positive in SL, but the skin market is very frustrating for me. (Particularly since I just bought a skin that I really don't like. My own fault, of course.) The Linden skin is just awful, particularly the eyebrows, but every single skin I've found has been -- at best -- the lesser of two evils. This is just for me, of course; plenty of other people enjoy the skins that are for sale, and certainly their creators put a lot of work into them, and many skins look excellent when lit head on.

It's just when they're not lit head on that I start to take issue. In my experience, shading that looks realistic when the avatar has a bright light pointed directly at it looks much less realistic when that light is removed. Stand in the light, and the avatar's skin looks properly reflective; turn from it, and I find the avatar just looks puffy and painted. Other people, obviously, disagree with this or think the tradeoff is worth it, but if I'm going to have a skin for general wear, I'd prefer it to also look decent in situations where I'm not facing the sun.

And then there's the issue of undertones. I've tried for a while to find a pale skin that I like, and -- with one exception, that I didn't like for shading reasons, and because it was a straight photosource -- I've just come up against skins with yellow undertones. (And, in a few cases, tan lines.) I'm a very pale winter RL, and I'd prefer to have one skin that lets me be one here, too. I've gotten frustrated enough on this front to start attempting to make my own skin, in fact. By the time I'm done, I'll probably wish I had just settled for something yellowy. ;)

For now, though, I've had enough of the Linden eyebrows, and will be sticking with my Asian skin from Adam and Eve, and this dark skin I recently bought from PixelSpa. (And finding a dark skin posed its own challenges!)