Rex's Guide to Line Art/Colouring/Shading

Greetings fellow artists I would like to share my knowledge which I have picked up during the making of a certain image, with you all These are for mouse only so if you have a drawing pad these may prove to be troublesome for you.

Line Art:

For this I would be elaborating on the following link so please read it before continuing
Tips on Line Art

Tips on using the pen tool:

1. Always keep your fingers on the Alt and Ctrl keys. These are the modifiers of any tool. Alt changes the pen tool into Convert Point tool, which can be used to change the tangent on any given point, which in turn effects the curve.
2. If you can't make a proper curve, its probably because of lack of anchor points. Click on the line to add an extra point to it. The cursor should change to a pen with a + under it.
3. Pressing control while dragging a selected anchor point will move it while doing so with Alt will change the tangents.
4. The tangents don't have to be a straight line. One can have a different angle than the other. Pressing Alt and dragging the tangent will change the shape of the curve on the respective side.
5. try to leave no gaps between to outlines so as to make the colouring a lot easier.

Colouring:
For colouring I suggest you use the paint brush tool, as it is quick and easy. If you don't like the white gap between the outlines and colour then use the bucket tool again, which should increase the perimeter by a few pixels, covering the gap.

Shading:
There are two methods for shading. You either play with the colours or you use the following method. Its easy and time saving so I use it a lot.

1. Set your brush to 1-3 pixels, 30-45% opacity (depending on how dark you want your shadows) and darken. Choose the Jet black colour or the one lighter than that.
2. Select your pen tool and draw the outlines of the shadows. Never use free hand with a mouse!
3. Stroke the path to get the outlines. You may now delete the paths.
4. Select the bucket tool, set it to the same setting as the brush tool earlier and fill in the outlines. Don't worry about the dark lines that appear near the outlines, we will cover that in the next step.
5. Finally, use the blur tool to mix the lighter colour with the shadows. This in turn will make your shadows a bit more realistic and it will also hide the outline of the shadows and any mistakes you may have done

I know there are more experienced artists on OJ so please share your opinions. It may help me to improve the quality of this guide and my future works