Its hard to branch into the scenic route, really, it just takes a lot of time and practice. By no means will you get it
right the first 10-20 times. Eventually something will just work. You don't necessarily have to paint to achieve
that, either.
I took up vectoring not long after i started walling here because the results are cleaner. It was hard to start, but
along the way, i figured out how to correct pixellation issues by working with very LARGE lineart in PS or preferably
illustrator. When you shrink the lineart and coloring down it makes for almost no pixellation on your lines <3 If you
compare my early vectors (which are now mostly changed to indy-art) you can see the progress. So, point being, you will
need a good computer with a nice processor and RAM to work with the large resolutions.
Vectoring is all about cleaning up an image that otherwise wouldn't be usable for a wallpaper/design
feel free to take your own approach to it, also, freshness in this field is great - don't want just another
vectorer. kiyanaikebana is a great example of
someone that has their own take on the look of vectoring.
Start with a focal character that looks natural in the environment you imagine. Maybe they're on a windowsill,
maybe they're in a field of flowers, maybe they're floating on a plane of alternate existence. regardless,
imagine different scenes based around the position and flow of your character - and dont be afraid to change things
like... adding your own motion to the hair and clothing. Vectoring makes lines so easy to draw that you can edit just
about anything you want to change on an image. No drawing pad required. You can also try vectoring an already-scenic
image, or take a scene from the SAME series and apply it to an alternate scan. Combining images isn't cheating if
its by the same mangaka :)
Being able to use the character to imagine a scene that fits them, or begin to search for a background image to vector
that suits them... helps me. Not sure if what I mean will translate though :P
Not sure if that helps at all ^^ practice makes perfect, post what you work on here, even if you think its minimal or
silly, progress isn't made fun of here :P