Been a long time since my last vector.  Combination of a lack of interesting images, school, and laziness.  Decided to get some more practice on coloring images from a non-colored original.

This Momiji image was very cute, but I really wanted the ear completed, and I wanted it colored.  Thankfully, while the original wasn't colored, it did provide the shadows, so I at least knew where to put them.  I used a bunch of different sources to find some colors, and tried keep the coloring to the interpretation from the original artist, but unfortunately there were differences between other of his images and the other sources were quite poor, so I used others elsewhere to get the colors closer.  From there, I just adjusted the colors until it looked okay on my screen.  I had difficulties doing so, since I am not very good at this, and have only done it once before.  I also wasn't sure how to do the eyes, mainly the white base color behind the pupil.  I tried it as a solid whitish gray, but it looked a little weird, so I changed it to a radial gradient to make it look a little less solid.  I wasn't sure which I preferred, so I just made two versions, one as a solid, and one as a gradient (the one posted on DA), which will be included in the Dropbox link.

The lineart wasn't too difficult.  I readjusted the thickness all around, since the original had the borderlines around the image thicker than the rest of the lines on the inside (not sure if that has a term in the art world).  Picking a thickness to stick with was the main hard part.  I also decided to just make two separate fills and minus front for the puffballs and since they were fairly large pieces of the image, the strokes didn't look very good.  It did make each one take minimum 30 minutes to get right, but I think they came out better this way.

It was still interesting to practice with, even if it didn't come out as I hoped.  I have to play with more images like this to get a better idea how to handle it in the future and actually understand when a color is too saturated or dull, or transitions between other colors actually make sense.  For now, I am just completely oblivious to it without a colored source.

Original by Ryuu (multitask): danbooru.donmai.us/posts/18478…

Dropbox: www.dropbox.com/s/3cc376gw2let…