Attempting to standardize my colouring... Need opinions.

[Keilis]

So I was inexplicably drawing HK from APH, and decided it would be as good a time as any to try to standardize the way I colour digitally, because it's really unstable for me right now, especially hair. I was wondering what style people like for hair. You don't have to justify why if you don't care to, just let me know which one you like. And don't worry about how I should "draw whatever I want" . I like drawing any of them.

Excuse the large image.

[Mink]

I like the bottom left one. I don't know, maybe the others are a bit shiny for my tastes?

[nyaatrap]

I like bottom left or bottom right. I think shiny hair looks stand out more than his face and killing it.

[Stripe]

bottom right is my fave <3

[Tetiel]

Perhaps it's my shiny desu in me, but I think the upper right is best. Upper left is a bit too bright, but I feel that the shininess fits in with the rest of the shading which is very, very bright.

[HigurashiKira]

Bottom left is the better one IMO, it ressembles the more moder coloring styles as well

[Tsundere Lightning]

The upper right one shows off the mass of the hair much better than the others.

[Nuxill]

The bottom two work better in my opinion. In the top ones the hair is competing with the face too much. I like being able to see more of the hair's form on the right image, but I also like the simplicity of the the hair on the left. Both of them work well for their own reasons.

[Auro-Cyanide]

I like the top right but the real question is, which one can you replicate the best? If you are trying to pick a colouring style, then it has to be consistent to be a style. Also it might be worth considering how time consuming each one is vs the effect you want.

[Keilis]

OTL Well, I guess I can eliminate the top left one for sure. Thanks for your opinions, though I'm still a little undecided, haha. I'll wait and see if anyone else has opinions to add.

@Auro-Cyanide: Actually, all four of them use the same layers, but at different opacities; that's all I would need to adjust. The "dotted" shine that you can see best at the bottom left is left at 100% for all four examples, but the "spiky" shine (that huge slab of shininess) is adjusted from 100% (top left), 75% (top right), 25% (bottom right), and 0% (bottom left). So as long as I can do the dots and the slab of spikes, I'm good. I've been alternating between both the past... two or so years? Just not sure how much of the slab of spikes I want. I'll be able to replicate them OK; they'll all the take same amount of time, save the bottom left one, where I can just dot it.

[GARLICBREAD]

I think the bottom left looks good, while it is simpler, it doesn't have unnecessary shine and is less distracting from the face.

[Fawn]

I prefer the first one. However, some critique:

The shading in general seems scribbled on, there's no order in the way that you're shading. Try smoothing it out a bit by using as few strokes as possible while keeping with the light source. It also saves you time to do simple strokes instead of trying to shade strand by strand.

Also, the colored lines are a bit too light. Having no variation in the color makes the lines look flat. You should vary their color by adding darker gradients to the lines where the light doesn't hit as much.

Hope that helps!

[Greeny]

Top right feels best for me. In general, the right side is more natural.

[Keilis]

@Fawn: I do intend to smooth out the shading; as you can see, the colouring is not finalized, but is the general idea of how I want it. I actually use a very large brush to do the initial shine, then I go back and erase it to look more strandy so it looks less blocky.

I'll consider using gradients for my lines. Well, maybe not gradients, but darkening them where they should be dark.

[OtomeWeekend]

I prefer the bottom left as well. though I think every of them were nice *_*