well, I ish not a photoshop expert. . . . in fact, I know nothing :'(
there are a lot of tutorials on it you could find.

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I ISH THE RULER OF CRAZEH, CRAZAY, and CRAZY WORLDS plus FUNKY TOWN!

To get your traditional lineart to become transparent, you must right click, select "Duplicate Layer", click ok.

Then, you have to go to the NEW layer, and under layer properties/settings select "Multiply". This will make the black opaque while making the white transparent.

Make sure to delete your original layer, and color on layers underneath your Multiply layer.

I hope this helped! If you need any other tips, you can always contact me! :3

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"Now, Johnny. Sometimes, a magical wizard will fall in love with another magical wizard. And their wands will touch. And magic will happen. But not babies."

Doug Benson, on how to explain Dumbledore's homosexuality to children.

Actually, I forgot about the Lineart/Coloring preparation tutorials I made last year, hehe.

[link]
aaaaand
[link]

There you are. :3

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"Now, Johnny. Sometimes, a magical wizard will fall in love with another magical wizard. And their wands will touch. And magic will happen. But not babies."

Doug Benson, on how to explain Dumbledore's homosexuality to children.

i know some stuff about photoshop 7.0. but I'm not sure about traditional inking and digital coloring but i would say use the background eraser to erase the white areas and use the lines as a stencil and color on multiple layers under it. but i do know that using the pen tool is really good at simulating traditional inking. has a good tutorial here on deviantart [link]

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I'm Commander in Fur of [link] join us and rule the world!

I kinda skimmed through your journal (not much of a journal reader ) so I'll be a bit vague about this.
first off, the whole "traditionally ink then scan" thing can work in different ways. I know of two.
one, you make a new layer above the ink and set the brush to "burn" type.
the other (I prefer this) is to turn the drawing into a layer (double click on it but not on the "background" text) and set it to uhm... either screen or multiply. don't remember which, but it makes the white go away and you're left with the outline.
problem with that is that unless your ink is void solid black, there's gonna be a certain level of white to it and it might vanish a lil in some places. not sure how to fix that myself.

if by "getting better" you mean the way your shading looks then it's simple. You don't really know how light works.
You seem to shade with a single light source and add the shades only in places where you think it should be, and not where it would actually be.

Take this image for example [link]
your single light source is directly at the bottom of the character and based on the color of your highlights I'd say your light is a solid white (though the light itself isn't very bright)
The problem with that is that, dude's surrounded by fire. The light shouldn't be white, it should be yellow-reddish. The highlights should reflect this. and they shouldn't really be coming from the direct bottom, they should be coming in from all angles.
at the same time, the shadows should only really be in closed in places (such as the armpits) and near the very top edges of the character (up high, like on the head). This is also due to the fire. It's a huge wall of flames stretching higher than his head. So while it still casts light, it IS weaker than the lower end of the flames, and thus it should only create a very small shadow up above.

Another tip I'd like to throw in is you gotta keep in mind that stuff's made of different materials. and different materials have different types of glossiness to them. For example, I'm guessing that blood is freshly bled, but since there aren't any sort of bright highlights, and the shading matches that of the rest of the body it looks like a tattoo or like it's been there for a while and dried. We know it's blood because of the context of the image. but aside from that, there's nothing hinting at it being so.

In the end it's really about understanding light and how it affects the way stuff looks. Even shadows.
Thanks to some visual property the eye has. shadows are often a combination of the surface's color and the opposite color of whatever is casting the shadow. for example. if you have a yellow lemon sitting on a red surface. and cast a white light on it. the shadow would have a barely noticeable purple hue to it. because blue is the opposite of yellow, and the surface is red.

So yeah... I kinda rambled in there for a bit. Hope it's the stuff you're looking for if not then don't feel like I'm tearing your work apart. I like your style, but if you really wanna improve on stuff then lighting is the key to it.
So my best tip is to study the way light works and try to apply that. the rest is just practice

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FELINE SUPREMACY!!!

I'm not a photoshop user - I use paint shop. Best wishes to you. ^^

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"A good artist is a person who has a good heart while knowing that he can express himself in what he makes, despite the quality of it, and that he can always improve. What he makes can be the product of their emotions, feelings, or their ideas." -Myself

Listen... I was once in your shoes too and then I accidentally spotted this site and I started to experiment myself growing from it... here the link to know the basics... [link]

it shows how to put the picture you scanned into... turn the layer to multiply... it screens out the white and leaves the dark lines. Look at this site and it breaks down pretty simply...

Also try the wand to fill in once you clean it up.

Good luck and I hope that site helped.... I think the comic artist also uses the same photoshop program...

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It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.---(Sam Levenson)

P.s Try using pen and or threshold but then again I am not that great myself. I think your way better artist than I am.

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It's so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and say the opposite.---(Sam Levenson)

I tried but it did the opposite - it left the white but made the lines transperant.

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The middle finger = the most communicable of fingers.