Welcome to Gaia! ::

Why are you posting up something here you aren't proud of? Are you looking for criticism? Just because you are stomping all over it doesn't mean I'm gonna make you feel better about it.

Read on if you want to hear from mean ol' Birtron.



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Yup. You're totally right.

Lack of diverse colors and lack of pen diversity makes it all muddled up. You didn't outline the character very well, so it is making her fade into the background a lot more than she should be because the background has WAY too much similarity to what is going on in the foreground.

Her crown looks like an extension of her hair due to it's orange-y luster. It's really either it looks like metal, or her hair are malleable gold wires forming sheets growing out of her skull. Your skin toning isn't too good. You're using way too much smudge tools to move it around without seeing where the light source is.

The background is making the character more unrecognizable than she should. If you know a little bit about how the color wheel works, it would be best to go with some cool colors to balance your scheme here and make her more stand-out-y. Either that, or if you go with pure warm colors, Wouldn't it be better to go with a really dark red violet to counter-balance the massive orange and yellowy substance that you want to stand out more?

The blouse she wears feels like it's part of the background. Not a good thing.

Her axe looks terrible with the color scheme in all honesty. Like I said above, it looks like it belongs in her hair, not at the end of a pole. A more natural steel color would have sufficed here, because it wasn't even necessary to give it the golden luster. Just an orange/yellow glint would have done the trick without coloring it in its entirety.

I hope that helps.

Photoshop or the program you're using here, it doesn't matter which one you use. Just because Photoshop is the staple, that doesn't make the program you are using makes it any less potent.

What is it? Fireworks? Open Canvas? PaintShopPro?

I won't kid you here, Photoshop is difficult to use.

The thing is, every single program has it's perks and its drawbacks, and each one is just about as good as the other.

The only reason why you're wanting to choose Photoshop is because everybody else uses that program. That's not necessary. Each individual program stresses something else. If you were going to be using something SOLELY for coloring and drawing pictures, I would get Corell Painter. It's much better than Photoshop when it comes to drawing and coloring pictures. Photoshop is best for Photo-manipulation.

If you want to draw comics and such, get Deleter Comicworks or TokyoPop's Manga Studio.



Never get a program solely based on, "well, this is what other people use, so..." because there's some programs that work better depending on your application of the program.