For one of my classes, we had to design and color a character design. After several scrapped sketches and ideas, I finally thought about this design. Couple of the references were Batman's cape turning into bats, Venom's eyes, trenchcoats and of course human skeleton. 

Since we had some class time to start designing our characters, I started this out in my sketchbook first and then brought it over to Photoshop to trace over and edit anything that needed to be edited. 

The coloring approach I went for this is the glazing method I read about from an artist I follow on deviantART, albeit my painting's no way up to pair to hers. 

 

I start with the grayscale (value) version before I move onto color. 

Truthfully, I couldn't decide a color palette at first. I went from dark blue, to red, to dark red, to purple before coming back to another blue. 

 

From there I could decide the other colors. Actually, now that I think about, since I knew I wanted the handle to be brownish orange, blue was the color to pick to contrast it. 

(Overlay 70%)

After placing those base colors, I painted additional colors on the bases colors and blended. (Normal 100%)

 

After all of that was done, and I scrapped the idea of his coat tails turning into mini bats due to tangent issues and it just not working with the angle, I used color balance to push it towards a cool aura. 

I opted to paint over those lines from the linework and alter a few things. I also realized I completely messed up its left hand. 

I fixed that hand and adjusted brightness and contrast with curves. 

I fixed the feet but I can't figure out why that hand is wrong.