A few people, particulary Tippy lately'd asked about colouring so I figured I'd upload this to help give some ideas on my workflow


One problem I always had until quite recently was how daunting it is to begin colouring a piece; invariably you'll have gotten the lineart looking pretty sharp and any try at applying colour that blank canvas is likely gonna make you go "OMFGsux, let's leave this as lineart".

The first trick is to get some kind of background in sooner rather than later, even if it's only a light wash of a pastel shade as it'll break up the whiteness which instantly gives a -50 to scariness /end fable reference.

Now, the swatches you can see on the left The darkest colour is the ambient light for the scene - that is the diffusive light that covers the entire scene getting into all but the deepest nook and shadow. The lightest shade is the primary lightsource in the scene; in this case the sun filtered blueish through the clouds.

I then took Ayala's basic fur tones (the lower 2 swatches) and mixed them to produce counterparts - the darkest colour the fur will appear under these lighting conditions, and the colour it'll appear in direct sunlight.

Armed with those base colours I then painted on a base coat for all the colour areas, which can be done quickly and painlessly. If you think about light, any given object is ALWAYS in shadow unless there is a ligh source. Therefore it's more effective to start with the darkest colour and paint on the light instead of starting with the base colour and painting on the shadows as people are inclined to do normally.

Once the base colours are down you can then use the lightest shade and a harsh brush to quickly paint on the highlights where they matter most, which is the stage this piccy is up to. After that you can use a smoother brush to smooth it down where approriate or bleed the lighting. After that you'll probably want to add further highlights and details but it works nicely for producing that initial layer of lighting which can be so daunting to get down to begin with...

Edit: Oh - and be ruthless!
Use a harsh brush, and dig in there with the lighting or colours. Don't use a soft edged brush - especially not an airbrush type, (at least not til you get more experienced). It's so easy when you're still not confident to try dabbing at it with an airbrush, only to find the end result feels very wishy-washy.