Sigh i need a lot of help =(

[Blackpig]

I'm totally dissatisfied with my peice, it doesn't look complete, and i've been spending way to much time on it. The color needs work, the lighting is kinda wierd, and the most frustrating part is that when i'm drawing this it feels more like running in circles, please help!

http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/04chiak/colorcopy.jpg
ps. what are your strategys for layering, darkers colors first? light colors? i'm totally confused on how i should set it up.)

[Blackpig]

this is the underlaying layer (background) of this picture http://i146.photobucket.com/albums/r271/04chiak/colorcopy2.jpg

[Sepulverture]

and i'm giving a lot of it. The second one is coming along much better man, but keep in mind that if everything is the same color it's going to be hard to make anything out. Waht exactly are you trying to accomplish here is an important question to ask yourself. what sort of moods are you attemptint to evoke with this picture. Once you have that done, then choose your palette accordingly. Likewise you have to have a clear understanding of what the focus of your picture will be. Focus is an extremely hard thing to achieve if you don't know how to go about doing it, and unfortunately I still suffer from the same problem, so I couldn't even begin telling you how to go about doing that, but I can say that compositionally you seem to be alright. You haven't gotten any large important pieces of the picture smacked dead center which is always good.

The landscape - The landscape itself is kind of boring. don't get me wrong, the design is kinda cool, but everything is the same color, basically unvarying other than you have defined some areas of light and dark. The sky itself may be causing some problems here too. Try filling in the whole sky with thecolor it's supposed to be, even if there are multiple colors on it (which there should be), just make sure all the colors are properly in place. I'm getting the feeling this is supposed to be a deep dark night, but right now it looks kinda of like you went over the sky area once in most areas with your brush set on 50% opacity, which there is nothing wrong with, but it looks like you stopped after the first pass in many areas. The building should be a different color than the terrain. If you're trying to give the impression of the buildings being made out of the environment itself, I'd suggest going and talking to the pueblos (http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=lang_en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=pueblo&btnG=Search). They will help getcha on the right track.