Evil Tiger Says: Hee~ I think that "grainy" look is the beauty of pencil crayon drawings! ^_^ It gives the picture a solid, yet light feel to it. Sometimes you can do more solid colouring with pencil crayons too, it all depends on what type of pencil crayons you have and what type of paper you draw on. If your pencil crayons have alot of wax in them, it's harder to blend and get the colours on the paper, but if your pencil crayons have softer leads, the colours goes on the paper easier. This picture looks as if it's done on sketch book paper (am I right? ^^"), if that's the case, try using ordinary photocopy paper next time, they're smoother compared to sketchbook paper. I really like the sketchy colour look to this picture, and how you mixed the colours, don't let the "grainy" look stop you from doing more pencil crayon works! ^^

If you'd like to learn more about CGs, try online tutorials that other artists have written, they are VERY helpful... ^^ Wee... I'm no CG expert so I'll stop from here, maybe other REFFs have better tips for CGing!

Keep on drawing! ^_^

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Setsuna Says: If you want to make edits to this picture itself, you can cheat a little by going into a photo editing application and using the 'smudge' tool. I recommend Adobe Photoshop, or else the free 'Microsoft Photoeditor' program that's on the Windows 95 cd. If you're really careful and good with your mouse (and also willing to spend lots of time on this) you can fully smooth out your graininess...

Otherwise, I've been told that physically going over your color pencilwork with a clear or white wax pencil can help blend the coloring a bit.

For the hard copy of your color pencil work, though, unless you press really hard, you'll always have the 'grainy' look to the the coloring. A good way to use this aspect to your advantage is color mixing. Using a lot of different colors to mix your own shades, rather than sticking with the straight boring shade that the pencils come as can really improve your image.

Good luck, and good work!

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Kon Says: Hmmmm... personally... IMO.. sometimes.. "grainy" arwork can look nice.... such as chalkcoals... Though I'm terrible at it. Hmmmm.. looks like... a young version of Jin?.. =D I have very little experiences with color pencil.. but I remember I was able to smooth it out more by using a shading stump. It looks like a tightly rolled up wad of paper and used to smudge the color pencil to make it blend better.

CG tends to be ultra-smooth with the exception of a few programs... like Painter... CG coloring will give you very smooth coloring results. The best way to start learning to CG IMO is by practice and experimenting... and try to get the software to do what you want.. and then start looking for tutorials and ask specific questions on how to do a particular effect or technique in CG.