Any Tips on Coloring and Lining a Comic?

[bluepaintcan123]

I've finally gathered the motivation to start a comic, but I have a lot of issues with the way I draw. When I try to draw with clean lines it doesn't look right and not as nice as my sketches. On the other hand, the sketches don't look right when I color them.
I just want my comic to look nice but I don't know enough about digital art to do it right.

I want to stop my art from either looking nice or garbage, I want to keep steady quality. Any advice?

EDIT
I was playing around with the brushes and this is what I've done so far. Is the coloring alright?

[joannekwan]

It really depends on your style I suppose, do you have examples of what you're currently doing and perhaps people can give pointers?

EDIT: you'll need to link the pics here from an external source since the image cache here in the forums is currently full.

[spadesart]

I always shade my lineart to give some depth back to it that the sketch had

i use paint tool sai but here's the brush i used for it

[punkarsenic]

i think seeing some of your art could help people give you advice; we can work out where you might be going wrong to not be satisfied with it

[bluepaintcan123]

I've been trying to fix the lines because they look too shaky

[Tanisha]

What program are you using? Most programs have stablizing features to smooth lines.

[joannekwan]

In addition to stabilizers, you can always just practice making quick strokes for smoother lines.
For larger curved areas, sometimes I'll do two strokes to construct them. And I don't worry about each stroke's tails coming off where they intersect because you can just erase them.

[spadesart]

i agree with @joannekwan with the quick strokes! here's an example with the hat, i had my stabilizer off for this

the slower the stroke, the more shakiness will pick up, so that might also be causing it to look that way!

[KytCordell]

I could be wrong but these look like photoshop lines to me based on the way some of them taper. Photoshop is honestly pretty terrible for doing lineart (though it's what I use due to hardware limitations). If you can, I would recommend doing your lineart in PaintToolSai and turning up the "stabilizer." Photoshop also has a plugin by lazy nezumi that helps you smooth out lines if you want to give that a try.

Anyhow, in general, there is always a tradeoff between sketchy-free lines and clean inked ones. Drawings always lose a bit of "flow" when you go from sketch to inked. Or, it is possible to adopt a sketchy inking style--which is harder to color, but maintains the same effect from the sketch. I think the main issue you should work with drawing wise is to make use of line weight more. Places where you laid down lots of sketch strokes on top of each other should be inked with thicker lines in the final product.

Best of luck.