Doh! Hope you feel better soon, Dinonykos

My tutorials on my site (they are still up?) are a bit different, as I usually just draw directly with my mouse... But in any case, I think the most variation can be had in step #5...
Photoshop: A long time ago, I used to use Photoshop - in that case, you can do some interesting things, such as make your drawing transparent, and then color in a different frame underneath, so it is like coloring, without worrying about messing up your drawing. You can then use smudging tools, spray tools, etc., and then erase any stuff "outside the lines" later on.
Paintbrush + Alpha: Another trick for more poor folks (well, Gimp is free, but) is to simply color a huge picture in Paint first, and then shrink it down with another software (or just even take a screenshot of Windows image previews) so that your pixelly product will magically transform into a dithered picture (that you can use for your small pics, etc.).
I of course like it pixelly, so I prefer not to do the above anymore, but some people like the effect! (I like Scale2x and RotSprite instead for manipulating sprites.)
I will put up some "anime-style" pictures I did soon (I had them on my old site) as a comparison - but these I drew with a mouse to begin with as well.