As someone who was only taught how to paint, I just throw down rough shape guidelines and paint over it. No layers. I'm by no means a professional (or heck, even good at anything other than landscapes) heh

Bob Ross's happy trees.

I kid. I am also interested as well, it is a fantastic art style and it would be nice to see more of it here on FA

I paint the happiest rocks :P

http://domitar.deviantart.com/art/S.....15534&qo=8

If I could ever get better at line work or digital stuff I might get somewhere!!!

Oh derp! I totally forgot! Ctrlpaint.com has some lovely digital painting tutorials that would likely help you!

im curious myself

I think the best easiest to go is to paint over a sketch.
Have the sketch on a layer, and the painting on a (multiply)layer over it!
That way you can still follow your guidelines with your base colouring, and make out the shape that way. It must be different for everyone, but that's what works the best for me!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWiu.....gg&index=1

This lovely person made a tutorial i looked at yesterday

In which they make it look easy.

Quite useful i think

I want to try not using lines so much too.

I would like to know too...

I generally put my characters on one layer, background on another. Sometimes I paint directly on the sketch, if it's neat enough. If it's really rough I do it on a separate layer and retrace with the color I am going to use.

My sketches are really rough and I use my 'paint' to sculpt the characters, rather than just color them. Sometimes I 'undo' 10 times before I am happy with a particular look. Add paint, take some away, add some more.. much like working with clay.

I use top layers to add some final depth with extra high lights and shadows..

I only use Open Canvas Plus (4.5, newer versions give me errors). Programs like photoshop scare me with all the functions and stuff. After years of working with OC I still don't know what all the functions do

Benefit of staying basic is that I can pick up paint and basically use the same techniques... Only I do miss my 'undo' function with traditional media.

Pictures work better than words...

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9830963/ sketch
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/9871271/ finished piece

I Just draw my sketch in a general sense, and refine it a little bit and then I just paint on a new layer above it. I dont really make a super detailed sketch. Sometimes when I need to paint something thats behind the character (like the tail) I draw it on a new layer beneath it. Just make sure to use darks with highlights to show where folds and limbs end an begin.

It takes a lot of practice and understanding about how to make visual "lines" without actually making lines. Nothing in real life has lines, but the eye separates objects through contrast in color and/or light.

This is my favorite digital painting tutorial that I've seen that most closely resembles what I aim to do in my own work: http://tasteslikeanya.deviantart.co.....8875&qo=41

Though I do it a bit differently myself. I was going to explain it, but decided it would be easier to show you in gif form.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v.....f?t=1367468161

Hope that helps.

Personally I think the best method is to not get bogged down by countless layers. create a bunch as you go, and then periodically flatten them down once you're comfortable with what's on the canvas, then create more temp layers every time you wanna put down a new set of brush strokes. As for line/sketch removal should be a bit late in the process. Erase it away gradually as you start to polish the areas that were hidden under the lines.

Here are some nice tutorials. Also, check out the rest of the site. There's a lot of good videos there.
http://ctrlpaint.com/videos/line-removal-pt-1
http://ctrlpaint.com/videos/line-removal-pt-2

And if you're new to direct painting (rather than having a separate layer for shadows, highlights, etc.) then try painting completely in black and white first and then making a multiply layer on top and adding color that way.

I'm done a few no lines in MSPaint and that drawing thing on Deviantart... I can't say I'm awesome at it... but what I do is picture everything layered then put down the first one and stack on top. And clean it up as I go.

On actual paper it's different. On paper I go for all the lighter colors first then mix in all the darker shades later.

In both cases I have an idea of what I want to make before I make it. I've never really used a sketch for the digital since I don't have an actual layering program such as SAI or Photoshop but on paper I do have a sketch first but if I go "outside the lines" it's perfectly fine as the darker colors can correct any of my mistakes later. :3

^^^ Again I must stress... not really great at painting... XD

It's probably worth your while to troll through some real media painting guides. Oils, Acrylics, Gouache and Airbrush all have pretty direct parallels with digital painting, and there's no end to the resources for learning those.

I pose a counter question: How in hell do you make nice lines? I can't do it. D:

Right? I want to know if there's a certain pen setting that will correct lines or anything like that in photoshop...

I used to ask this question a lot, and artists would tell me: Oh, i do it by hand, zoomed at 300%. Most of that was bullshit. There is a pen tool (freehanded setting) in photoshop that grants such lines, but it takes a lot of practice.

Ah, good to know! Thank you ^^

try doing a line and color piece, then take off the lines and adjust how you see fit

I use a paintbrush.

My sketches vary in cleanliness, but I make sure things make sense before I paint and save the details for later. I start out with several layers -- usually sketch, flats, background, background parts. I'll throw shading on another layer, or a duplicated flat color layer, make sure my lighting is basically correct. This can be as simple or as detailed as you want. I keep the sketch at fairly low opacity, then flatten the image and start painting over everything. I'll add new things on new layers if I want, but I generally stick to just one or two to work on.

I usually only do line-less painting for my backgrounds and environments, though I've done it enough in the past with characters (mainly in my "I want to be Craig Mullins!" phase several years ago). The method I came up with was to learn to think in terms of highlights and shadows. I notice in your most recent image that it looks lik you're starting off with flat color shapes, then adding light and shadows. There's nothing wrong with that if it works for you, since there's no wrong way to make a great image. But if it doesn't work well enough for you, my suggestion would be to dive straight into light and shadow. In order to do this, though, you have to be able to roughly see in your head where you want your darks and lights to be in the image. To get to that point, I basically just did a lot of life drawings with a chisel-tipped Sharpie marker and white-out brush, usually of subjects with dramatic shadows (ie: a building at sunset where the shadows are really pronounced and interesting to look at, as opposed to mid-day noon or on a cloudy day).

Another thing I learned was to watch movies with really good cinematography, and to pause the DVD at especially beautiful shots and study what about them made it so amazing, or even doing quick marker sketches of the still shots.

i would think someone would create some base shapes then form the body work on top. like how line art usually starts out and works in, this could start in and work out

This was done with two or three layers. The sketch was on it's own layer and I think I added water ripples with another layer.
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8353599/
http://www.furaffinity.net/view/8343078/

Well, the way I do it is starting with a sketch on a transparent layer, usually quite rough. I then add the base colors on a layer below the sketch, using it as a guide. I tend to break up the sketch in more layers if the body parts overlap, which helps me get better separation later on in ht e process. Once that is done, I then make a copy of the sketch layers so that I have something to go back to if (when) I mess up and change the layer property to darken so I can use the smear tool as the first shade layer on top of the base colors. I find that little trick kickstart the shading progress. I also add more layers for the shadows, highlights and finally any glare at the very top. As you can imagine, I end up with tons of layers, even gone above 200 layers on my more complex works. But usually it is around 20 or so.

it really depends on what style you want to use

the best way for me is to start with a sketch with a normal brush and make some shapes. just like a start of a lineart drawing. crappy quick sketches.
than use a new layer below it and do a quick color block.
than merge them and paint of it to the amount of details you want.
you can always add extra layers if you want to try some stuf on the foreground and merge them later to make it easier to blend.