Greyscale

last week something came over me and I really wanted to learn this new frontier of greyscaling. I'd never tried one before, but they look stunning and I was interested to see how they were done. so I looked up a million tutorials on dA, looked at a lot of photos, and got to it. I worked really hard on taking my time and not rushing through it, and this morning I finished it. I know it's far from perfect and has lots of imperfections, but I'm very proud of myself as this is something I've never done before.
and here is the plain greyscale once finished: 
and here is the colored version, of my new character Geena:


and here is my character pixie with a (kinda rushed but whatever) autumn background:

at this point, I will not be changing it but I am welcoming constructive criticism on what I can do better in the future. definitely the longest I've spent on a a simple headshot like this in a long time, hah.
I would love to hear what you all think c:

It looks really good, for your first greyscale! I've never done one before, so I couldn't really help you on ways to make it better, but it looks amazing regardless!

thank you horsegirl c:
I also made a few more backgrounds for some of my other characters :)

Oh their beautiful! Your welcome.^^

Your greyscale looks awesome! And I love the backgrounds you did :D

These are amazing Ducky!! ♥ ♥ 

thank you, lily and oak :)

It's a good start, you have the basics down. Next time I would focus on making your brush smaller and adding some more details where it's darkest on muscle lines or around the eyes, and to move away from soft fuzzy brushes. They're good for laying down basic shadows but ideally you want to be bringing in some sharper edges as not all shadows are soft edged. i.e here's a lighter one of mine: warmblood and some darker/more detailed greyscales using a harsher brush: pony /  draught to give you a comparison.

As for colouring them in, I'd play around with layer modes on different settings to try and get the richest/most natural colours out of it. I usually have 3 layers on a mix of hard light, overlay and soft light. Of course it depends on how you have set up your base, if you've done it on one layer (easiest to draw nicely) or have separated the shading and highlights (easiest to colour) but it's all part of the fun in art. c:

Good to know, thank you for taking the time to help. c: