HELP coloring the grayscale illustration

[Darkmin]

ok well i read in some places that its best to establish your values in black and white then attacking color after wards but im having tons of trouble making it look right at all

any tips on coloring after you've draw in in black and white?

heres what im working on
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b188/Darkmin/Miscellaneous/gatekeeper.jpg

[JTown]

I got a few ideas.

First, I start by sketching it out on paper... maybe it's just me, but I'm more confortable with it. Then it's your choice how far to finish it...

Second I scan in my pic and use it as a guideline for my finished picture. I create many layers for each color section i'm working on... one layer for skin, another for hait, etc.

Third, when I finish doing all the B&W (on seperate layers) and he pic looks nice, THEN I add adjustment layers to get the colors to work well.

Hope this helps!

[Darkmin]

thats exactly how i did it minus the adjustment layer part , i have about 20 layers for the mask his body the eye the iris ground texture gate mountains and sky ect

this is the sketch below
http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b188/Darkmin/Sketches/scan0002.jpg

how do suggest i approach the adjustment layers?

what i was trying to do before was paint each thing on a new layer set to color or mulitply but it looked like crap

[sanakris]

You can do this digitally or by hand. Make a value scale of 10 white is 1 and 10 is black. if you can mange to do a scale then use it for with your picture. This way it'll be more organized and help your eye adjust. And also look into core shadows, cast, reflected light, etc. it's endless

[D@niel]

Play around with color and overlay layers. I normaly start witha colour layer and block in all my basic colours, dont be timmid, just slap em on. Then I usualy use an overlay layer on top of that and play around with values and saturation. On top of all this you can start painting on a normal layer again and use the colour picker to select coulours from what you now have.

I have no idea if this was at all helpfull, I am still learning how to do it myself!:)