Regarding Tags

Hi all!
I've been doing character commissions for awhile now. I have attempted a few tags, and they never end up as smooth or nice as the ones y'all do.
I work using the program GIMP.
I have tried both:
-Doing art on a large scale, then sizing it down in GIMP.
-Doing the art on a 150x150 sized canvas.

So I'm wondering...how do yours work out so well? Mine either end up totally unintelligible or just simply very pixely.
Any advice and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you all!!

hello!

Unfortunately since tags are so small, you'll frequently find yourself working with somewhat more pixely pieces simply because you're working on a pixel level. Increasing the size of the subject in the image is helpful, like the tag that you're wearing currently has the horse taking up most of the space. From looking at some of your designs as a point of reference, you may want to play with using a soft edged brush. For a more gradient look, you can use a soft brush at a lower opacity and slowly build up the color that you want, this will help get rid of hard lines that may appear harsh at a smaller scale.

Resizing an image is going to lose image quality. Resizing up or down will distort the image, making it pixelated, though the less you resize the less damage you'll have. 

Since drawing on a 150x150 scale can be really hard to get used to, I recommend starting at 300x300px and doing most of the drawing at that size, then sizing it down to 150x150px and putting the finishing detail work there to make sure lines still look clean and legible when zoomed out to the proper size (theres been times where I've had to re-adjust correct anatomy to incorrect anatomy because the tiny size made it all look like a blob, just because it looks fine big doesn't mean it will read/translate well with a smaller canvas size).

I hope this helps!

Very helpful, thank you a bunch!