What is it suppose to be

Like a cabbage tree house of horrows type of plant in a pot.

Damn! that is pretty good. I don't remember the last time i made a monster as good as that. Keep it up love your art work dude.

Your colors are still too close to eachother, contrast them more, and dont be afraid to use other colors in your palette, you should also read up on some guides and tutorials if you can and get the basic down, looks like you skipped ahead a bit.

I am not sure what guides and tutorials to look for "basics" when I google basics of coloring it comes up with stuff about dithering vs pillow shading.

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Ill try to help you tomorrow if I got time, jsut read over those tutorials and practice a bit then post a bad ass art piece.

Bump.

Any ideas on the newest one, it looks a lot better, to me, but I am sure there is something I could do to make it much better.

I did read them, what am I off on now? I made the ahadows darker and less saturated, used a more rounded shading, made the highlights more bright and less saturation, made the shading more rounded.

I decided I'd take about 30 minutes or so to put something together to demonstrate some techniques you haven't quite got a handle on yet.

First of all, shading:

Shading itself is a pretty large topic, but you have to remember that every material has its own texture. Textures provide a surface for light to refract off of, and each surface is going to provide a different look.

I can't claim to have mastered the technique myself, but looking at your version, you'll see that your entire subject looks flat with some faint attempt at a plastic shading.

Second, your choice of lighting direction is off. 99% of 2D games choose to shade from the top-left, while you have chosen to shade from the right-side only. While not a bad thing, you have to execute it properly in order to violate conventions. There's nothing wrong with doing things a bit differently, but the majority of the work you are going to see out there to learn from, will be shaded from the top-left. It will be easier to learn by example if you just try to stick with what other people do. My advice would be to stick to the top-left shading, and avoid violating conventions until you can grasp the conventions themselves. --Yeah, it's not a must, but you'll have a much better time figuring it out in the meantime if you stick to what other people do.

Picking a palette

Your palette is oversaturated. Your greens are just too green, and your reds are just too red. You want to use a palette that complements your desired subject's material, or it will just look fake. Only once you have grasped the basics, can you start making stylistic choices when it comes to color palettes.


Putting it into practice:

I started out marking off my materials with different colors, and just blocking out the shapes. I wanted to emphasize the head, so I started there. Then I drew some leafy shapes, to really drive home the carnivorous plant trope, and made a cute little tapdancing stalk for it to run around on:




Next, I chose my base colors, and filled in the parts:



Then, I took and mixed my variations, and started establishing the shading:



Moving on to the leaves:



I got overexcited about the leaves, so I opted to texture them just after establishing the shading:



And then our stalk just sort of fell into place. Look at how I established the twisted look. You'll note that I decided to remove a color from the palette, and kept the leaves on the stalk the same as the leaves around the head:



Now, I was at a loss for how to texture the head, so I just decided to make it look a little less smooth with some classic dithering. I figured since we're adding more details into the head, dithering wouldn't take up too much screen real-estate between our detail overlay:



Then I drew a mouth. I'm not overly happy with it, but it'll do the job. I tried white, and I tried purple, but in the end, I found that the red I mixed for the eyes worked the best.



And then I put in a simple eye. The eye could do with a specular highlight, but I kind of felt that glossy and plant-eyes would be overdone. Also note that I built up some texture under the eye, and over it to show that it isn't just flat on the face.



And last, I decided to draw in some vines on the back of the head. I meant to cover the whole head initially, but decided to be conservative with it:




The palette that I used is 5 colors with 5 shades each for a total of 25 colors. Honestly, I think I might have overdone it, though, on the number of colors.




Take a look at it next to yours just for sake of comparison:





Mine's nothing special (~30 minutes), but it is easier on the eyes due to a less saturated palette, a bit of texture, and more consistent shading.