NaSetsu wrote:
Omg you don't know how happy you just made me, though everyone kept telling me it looks dark, muddy, ugly, off and so on. No one actually seemed to explain what I was doing wrong in depth, telling me what's exactly wrong and that I'm blurring it to much now makes me understand what is wrong. I was like so seriously about to cry and give up but now knowing the exact threats that's making it not look good I honestly have to thank you. But though I would like to ask do you or do you know someone who can give me a tutorial on how I can do my coloring and shading with a mouse. All the tutorials are for tablet or the ones for mouse don't exactly teach you. If you don't know anyone can you make one for me, that would be greatly appreciated!
Yeah, you're making good progress. Like the others have said, don't stress over it too much - change will come with practice. You are already far along just by seeking out and accepting advice and trying to incorporate them. You've improved a lot in just this thread. Your latest coloring example is much better. The skin tone is definitely improved.
I hope you don't mind, but did a quick color over your original linework to show you what is possible: (And how awesome your drawing is with just a bit of different coloring.)
One thing I did was drop a Neutral Gray (50%) into the background, so that you can see the "true" value of the colors. In RGB, this color is 125,125,125. When you color on a plain white background, or a black background, your perception of the colors is alternated, and it can cause you to pick too dark or too light colors.
I wanted to show you that you can use colors like brown for the uniform and still have it read as black, and how you can use yellows and creams on things like a white shirt to give it definition and life and still have it look white.
Another thing I did was stick to mostly sharp edges like mitoky suggested to you to avoid the blurry and muddy look. I did this with a mouse - use the lasso tool in Paint Tool SAI to select areas and then flood fill them with the Bucket tool. I did this and just followed your original lines for the most part. You can see that just by following your lines and putting in sharp shadows of a contrasting color, you can make all that original work you did pop. You can go back on another layer and do that same thing for highlights. Just trace the shape of the area for the shadow or highlight and then fill it. (That is the secret to coloring with a tablet OR a mouse - the lasso tool! Use the polygonal lasso tool for more control.)
I see in your latest examples you are using a darker shadow on the hair to separate it, which is good, you just need to pick colors with more contrast to each other.
Keep it up. The drawing is the hard part, so you're far ahead there - now you can have fun with the coloring! Right now, focus on making sure you have good contrast between your shadow, highlight, and base colors, and using selections with the lasso tool to make your shading sharp edged and refined. Thumbs up.