I've been playing with color and media lately (I don't paint much), it's something i should learn to do considering i don't really have a portfolio. One thing that i have been doing that is really fun and interesting to me is mixing media so i can get a nice contrast of texture (or create a new one!). I've been playing with perticuarlaly colored pencil and water color, occasionally i'll bust out my inks too like the picture above but not often.
This one above is just colored pencil (ugh... i badly screwed up on that nose). The thing that i didn't really care for about the pencils is that alone they create kind of an ugly texture if you want them opaque, that texture though is great for hair! Yet skin is a different story, also they can get a little muddy after a while and because it's so waxy if your on that top layer and you make a mistake that color has to be blended in but it won't go away, you're basically left with a smudge. I draw pretty loosely and this is a very, very bad thing for me. This happened a lot when you were in an area with very contrasty colors, look around the eyes and you'll see what i'm talking about.
I tried something different. Instead I only outlined in color pencil. I created a thin watercolor base of colors and gradients, next I used some pastel chalks to darken and smudge, and THEN i went in with color pencil. The nice thing is that I didn't have to apply it very thick as in previous drawings, which meant that nasty textures and unwanted smudges could be easily averted. I'm still playing around with this, so I'll hopefully find new ways to color drawings.
This one i think is my favorite, it has a strong silhoutte and good framing with the use of the concertina, good colors too. 'Nuff said.