First photoshop drawing- Robot rocker - General

Hey everyone, I'd like to show you my first ever photoshop drawing, it's a robot inspired by fallout 3 robo-brains and is for some reason play a horribly deformed guitar. I drew it by hand, scanned it in, went over it, coloured and shaded. It's my first so don't expect anything amazing, I'd just like some C&C for future drawings! :smile: (and the bit at the bottom was an afterthought, hence it looking awful!) [IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/i4rded.png[/IMG] Thanks!

It's a good start: it's not guns, it's not stickfigure war, it's not war, it's not that violent preteen shit. It's unique and awesome instead. Tips for future: Break shit down into shapes, it's easier to think dimentions that way and it's overall easier and stuff comes out better that way. Before you start drawing shit, study it before like on this drawing I would've looked images, wikipages and how other artist solved problems with: Tracks brains glass guitars and general other drawings done on robots. On this one alot of stuff looks really nice, eg: the left shoulder, the shading on guitar body and the tuning pins (whatever i don't know how theyre called despite owning a guitar) It's so stylised yet it looks good. Also brain should be few layers down, cause it's in the glass dome not over it. Those colour changes affect brain as well.

Thanks alot for the tips, I really appreciate it. I'll take that into account with my next drawing which I'll probably do today! EDIT: Currently I'm only using one layer for the outline, and one for the colour. Would you say using three layers for the individual shades is a good idea? (base colour, highlights and low-lights)

You use as much as you want. I usually go like this sketch sketch 2 colour stuff(whatever I need, in your case it would be the brain here) Additional stuff as many layers as I need. outline details details on details whenever needed shading and additional shading layers I use alot of layers, dont' know wether it's normal or not.

I typically have the following set-up, but i'm not sure if you should use my way of doing it. Some people dislike the process of how I color my images, but it turns out nice enough in the end. However, I must admit that there most likely is a better way to color images out there, I just don't know of it yet, or am not experienced with it enough. Layer list as how it would look in photoshop: Lighting layer, with blendmode colordodge Duplicate of Color layer, for shading purposes, with blendmode multiply Color layer, with blendmode multiply Copy of Original, in case I need to edit it Original Image In other words, I have my original line-art on the first 2 layers, and the other 3 are used for the coloring. In the duplicated color layer, use a burn tool with [Hardness 60% // Range Midtones // Exposure 2%] wherever you think there should be some shading. On the lighting layer, just take some slightly transparent brush with a similar hue to your light, and go to town covering areas with your lighting. Using this, I achieved going from [url=http://filesmelt.com/downloader/superguitarrobotnocolor.png]this[/url] to [url=http://filesmelt.com/downloader/superguitarrobot.png]this[/url]. Here are the in-between steps for that picture: [url]http://filesmelt.com/dl/superguitarrobotflat.jpg[/url] [url]http://filesmelt.com/dl/superguitarrobotshaded.jpg[/url] [url]http://filesmelt.com/dl/superguitarrobotlighting.jpg[/url] And here is what my layers looked like for that image: [url]http://filesmelt.com/dl/layerlist.jpg[/url]