"Pssst, I'm going to tell you a Secret"

This coming Saturday will be the birthday of one of my characters (the one on the left). It's kind of an "anniversary" of how long I've had him for.

Since I've been working on improving my linework, I haven't done much of the painting side. My initial goal was to learn another painting style but in the end I think I'm going back to my old processes. I did learn, though, that if I did work on line-work  it's mostly going to be cel-shaded. If I were to work on my painting, it would be more of the colours and such. I'm having a hard time trying to put the two together, so I guess the result of it would be a mixture of these.