Hi-ho,
I'm not an expert on this by a long shot, and don't have much experience on portraiture... But..
I read a very good article in a photography magazine a few years ago about skin tones/texture and strobe/flash light..
The top few layers of skin are translucent, and so the 'colour' we see is a combination of the 'tint' of the translucent layers, and the colour of the lower more dense layers. Intense light can wash out the subtle tint of the upper layers, giving the 'caught in the headlights' washed out look we all know from on camera flashes..
With off camera flashes / Umbrellas / soft boxes etc. you get some interesting effects on different body areas. Areas with high concetrations of blood vessels such as hands, feet etc can tend to be reddish, as the blood vessels show up through the top layers of skin, or something to that effect..
Anyway, the long and the short of it (And the only bit I remember for sure) was to use a gold reflector/umbrella to fix the washed out tones, and red 'hot spots'.
With a digital camera you can get some of the way by simply using 'cloudy' white balance under flash, which warms up the whole image a little.. Although I suppose that would vary from camera to camera. I know it works on my G5, and I've read someone's post on the forums here with a 10D saying the same thing.
Hope that helps...
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