Black Lines or No Black Lines

"Baseball Kid" artbyangel.com

"Running Elephant" cartoon from 2009

Ok, lately I've been experimenting with different painting techniques in photoshop. I've been separating my ink and color layer to get a cleaner look. My old drawings like the running elephant above had all these horrible black lines around them. This "Baseball Kid" Cartoon I painted recently has a more appealing look without those black lines. I feel like I'm improving with every drawing. Children's book illustrator here I come.