I decided that since I got lazy and didn't want to do a stream of this, I would make a thread of the step by step for how I color and paint since a few people said they would be interested in that. So I picked my favorite pokemon for this, Mareep! This first part is just the coloring as I did this part yesterday and it's 10 steps.
Program used is PaintSai and my Huion tablet that will be replaced soon as it has no pen pressure so all this is without any pen pressure. Can't wait for my wacom to come in.
My usual method is very random parts at a time but I wanted to make it more organized for this. Also, I started with attaching the files but well, there is a limit and I forgot about that so only the first two are attached files, the rest I uploaded to a side tumblr account and just added via URL image attach. But the image when finished will have a transparent background(Unless I change it who knows). And if this isn't in the correct subforum, please let me know!
The lineart is by lilly-gerbil on Deviantart, click the link to see directly!
Step 1: Base color added in and where I want it. The lineart is on mulitply on a layer above.
Step 2: Second tone for the base coloring in a new layer on normal same as the base, though messy, I do clean up later.
Step 3: First bit of blending!
Step 4: Now here is the first bit of shading, another layer on multiply. For the shading, I picked where I wanted the light source which I picked the upper right of the image for it to come in from so the shading would be on the lower and left part of wool puffs and under the hair poof.
Step 5: More blending, shaping the wool puffs more with it.
Step 6: That wool looks a little flat and needs some light on patches. With the spray brush, used pink, it's on a new layer as well, right now on normal to show where I put it.
Step 7: Layer changed to overlay, no blending.
Step 8: Oops, forgot to put the head shadow along with the tail, time to add that in. New layer, multiply. I seriously use a lot of layers.
Step 9: Blend the edges and where I want it lighter and more spread out, added some more at the head shadow, and lowered the opacity to 42%.
Step 10: Clean up! Some small bits are still messy and small patches look odd, but that's okay as this is just the coloring, the painting will take care of that and fix it up.
Thats that for the main coloring, now the hard and time consuming part of making this even better and more like a painting style!