Soft Style Coloring

It's good to zoom in to be able to see what you're doing. Use an airbrush to gently shade the main areas. Later, go in with a smaller airbrush and harsher colors to reenforce your shading and details.

Just keep on shading and shading. When you finish with your first color, select the second using the eyedropper tool and repeat the select/color range command. Keep shading like a madman/woman.

Still shading on the shadow layer... Notice how there is a defined light source. Things to the left and bottom are darker because my lightsource shall be to the top right. Take this into account... and keep on shading! (that's the secret to nice soft style... lots and lots of detail)

Once you finish shading, it's time to think about the background. I created a new layer under the color, but over the background color. Airbrush in for soft edges, and paintbrush for crisp ones.

The water was done by paintbrushing in solid blue. Over the paintbrush, I airbrushed in general shapes working in more and more detail. Finally, I ran an ocean ripple, motion blue, and blur more filter on the water layer. Filters can help to enhance your work, but don't rely on them too much.

Under the water layer I made a sky layer. Clouds done in airbrush, as were the moon and stars. Keep working that detail into your background! You want it to be as nice as the rest of your picture.

Here's the final image. I added a last layer for magic effects. Since I am now finished with the piece, I merged the major layers to save space. You do NOT need to merge your layers, it's just what I do to preserve my harddrive. The shadow and the color were merged onto the same layer, as were all the background elements. Final layer order = magic, drawing, color, and background.