I think you did a great job for your first time. But then, look at what you had to work with: another lovely Firestar pic by VL. Nice color and shadow.

Oh very beautiful from VL's work....yes indeed.....oh I love that FireStar....

Man I thought she looked like Deidra Hall before the colour!

LOL VL. One thing I do personaly to get the color I need for skin shading is to take the base color I use. duplicate it and set the new layer mode to multiply and repeat this once or twice more to get the color That I look for. then sample the color to use in the paint brush.

I'm flattered that your first coloring attempt would be something of mine. And I'm always ahppy to see one of mine colored.

For a first attempt this is good. Practice with what the guys suggested and it should help. (I'm still learning... why do you think all my drawn stuff isn't colored? )

1st attempt @ photoshop? man, this looks better than anything i've colored in photoshop!

I used dodge and burn on the reds and yellows and most of the hair, but it didn't look right on the skin, so I picked a darker color, airbrushed at 15%, repeating on the edges, then blur and smudge. It's not real bad, just not as smoothe as I'd like. Thanks for the tutorial site. The color theory class might be helpful.

In photoshop, there is are tabs on the right side. Click the one that says Color and type these numbers in the red, green, and blue areas.

255
234
217

That's the skin color I use. For a darker shade I change the arrows a lil till the color I entered gets darker. Add a new layer, start painting your shadows with the darker color. And as Jr told me, grab the smudge tool, 50% strength, and smudge the edges of your shadows in small circles. After that, add another layer and go with maybe a brown that matches your darker skin. Repeat the smudge and your straight.

Looks pretty good to me. Did you use Dodge & Burn on the shadows on the back part of the face? I an putting a link up for a coloring tutuorial I found if you use photoshop.

http://www.steeldolphin.com/tutorials_photoshop.php Mods if you want add it to the list of links we already have :)

I could use some advice on shading. Her face looks dirty to me, but it looked worse when I tried going darker. I think it's my color choice, but I don't know how to pick the right colors for shadows so I was guessing.