Special request 1/2 for xsanichi on Instagram! She had a OTA up and my bid had won so now I'm working on some art for her.
First is her OC Lia. She wanted a scene with cherry blossoms so I decided to go with this~ I tested out a bunch of shading techniques so I'll be sure to use them for future pieces. Hope you guys like it! ^_^
Check out the instagram post for close up details on the background: https://www.instagram.com/p/BbCanPCAANg/?taken-by=lydiachan22

@rainbowpanda: AAAHHH thanky yous so muchies!! T 0 T <33 That means a lot to hear!
I do occasionally open commissions on FB and IG, though usually for real money :''D
Though when my to-do list is more calm I would really like to open a little art commissions shop on here! :''> Dunno when that will be though, or how much to price my work for what currency (since there's the volts and ohms and such haha).

@saeyra: I use soft light and hard light occasionally as well, though the mode isn't in my main program used to create the drawing itself, but afterwards in a different program for adding the watermark, stars, and any other high lights~ I know the same feeling ;;0;; Like, you don't want the background itself to blend in too much with the character, but adding a white boarder around them won't make it look like the character is actually in the background you drew for them (unless the background is some sort of random pattern and such of course) I hear that making thumbnails and choosing color pallets before starting helps. (Still a habit I'm trying to get into as well :''D)
Currently, my fav account to follow for coloring tutorials is:
https://www.instagram.com/sasucchi.tutorials/

@Lydiachan22: I do the thumbnailing and the color palettes but I think there is an extra step, the grayscale layout before the color? I don't do that or do it very minimally. Also, thanks for the Instagram thing. Looks pretty awesome! I look forward to seeing more of your art and chatting with you about this stuff

To me, it's actually quite a small size :'D I use the program Paint Tool SAI for sketching/lineart/coloring and then go into Manga Studio EX for the star highlights, text and any other effects. Since PTSAI has a brush size limit of 500, I like to keep the canvas size around that, as if it were bigger, even the biggest brush size would look really small and it'd be harder to make gradients and such :o

I think the zooming can defitetly effect things, like in some programs you want it to zoom in slightly in one area, but instead it zooms in too much and there's no way to get to the part in between (hope that makes sense ahh) but I find it incredibly annoying as well :''D What program do you use? :O I don't know if it applies to all programs, but in the one I use you can go to the menu thing at the top (where it lists File, Edit, Canvas, Selections, ETC) and you go to View, then click on New, it'll open another window of your canvas. You can then make it so then you are able to drag both windows around the work space and such. Anything you draw on one of the windows shows up on the other once you finish the stroke, so you can have one window thats zoomed in, and the other that's just normal (and if you want to go the extra mile I'm sure you can open a 3rd window of it and have that one be mirrored as I've heard mirroring your image can help you spot mistakes and such) //apologies for rambling ahh :''D

11/7/2017
My part of an art trade with bonchilo on Instagram! Since working on the other drawing, the background was really detailed and my hand wanted a break, and since I had another drawing I owed xsanichi that had a detailed background, I wanted to do a simple background for this one. Hope that is okay :'D It's been quite a few weeks since I've drawn any chibis so if anatomy looks...wonky.. I was just trying to get back into the groove :'D Hope you guys like it though <3

@mica: aaahhh thank yous so much!! ;;0;; <3