AC: Pokemon Pal

First off:

AC = Art Challenge

A friend of mine asked me to draw a picture of me with my favorite Pokemon. Being the fanatic that I am, I found it hard to just choose one but I think I've come to settle on one. I'm a fan of weird-looking Pokemon and Lickitung has to be one of the weirdest Pokemon I've come across. Definitely in the Underused Tier, he has a mediocre move set but being a Normal type, he can learn a vari--um, I should stay on topic. Anyways, here's the basic sketch:

I darkened it so I could see the lines better--doesn't really have to look glamorous. Next I traced it w/ my wacom. I like using the color blue. I also make a background layer and change the color to white:

I decided to do one character at a time so I'll start with the Pokemon; I realize that the drawing itself is a little off; my Lickitung's (named Lord Beef Wellington III, Wellington for short) feet are positioned weird and his arms aren't the same shape. I realized this way later on but managed to fix it up--for the sake of making me look good, let's say I caught it right away and fixed it when I went to draw the lines. I'm trying to shy away from simple, black lines and experimenting with colored ones:

I then add in color; I try to make the outlines darker than the base color so it'll show up but not stick out that much:

I don't like the way the eyes look; the eyebrow aren't actual eyebrows by the way--they're markings (that's why I didn't draw them in the line portion); Lickitungs have black eyes that are rounded and beady w/ a white shine in them but I thought I'd try a dark brown. I'm not satisfied with them and felt it'd probably look better when I add the shadow/highlight layer:

I'm not fully done with this layer but I wanted to post what I have so far; I'm selecting the color w/ the Drop tool and darkening the color for the shadows--it's not as easy as simply coloring black shadows and turning down the Opacity (maybe I should have done that...oh well). For now, the light source is simply above. Hopefully I'll get the eyes looking better...