Cursed-Fate

Yeah, I thought about that problem, my characters are often dead serious and getting a cute or otherwise not so serious expression is a challenge. My own style is considered by some as the edge of realism. I do find their statement to me extremely exaggerated but it does point out to the 'serious' problem haha puns. Anyway yes, I'll try to get inspirations from over things to understand how facial expressions really work. I also have an other problem which is totally unrelated to the lines: the colours. I always have a hard time shading even if mlp isn't the most shaded universe, but not talking only about shades, my colour palette seems off. Mlp is vibrant if that's something you can say, and my characters are....plain? My response is getting long. I thank you lots it's giving me new ideas

I have never been good with colors myself. I have learnt just a few years ago to adjust most colors at a late stage, as long as each colored object is in its own layer, you can use tools such as Hue/Saturation to change brightness and darkness, saturation (can pop out the color, make it brighter than others), and even swap the entire color spectrum (red becomes blue, or green becomes yellow). However, shades are limits to the colors you drew the shades in, so they might not be the same quality. That is of course fixed by having shades in separate layers as well.

Drawing everything in its own layer, even sketches, makes easier to adjust very small details, to get that perfect cuteness, and helps with colors as well.