Graphic Problem...

I am writing a chess game for my school project..(Console game).. i am using BGI graphics, mouse support and bitmapsupport... My game is pretty built now.. the interface, move validation, mouse movments etc.. but the problem is with the image quality.. the images i have stored are very small and is 24bit BMP... they look good on paint.. but not on the console.. Here is a part of my code which reads and displays the image on the screen.... Help me display the image better..

Code:

void wking(int sx,int sy) \\sx and sy are the screen position to place image
{
   char a;
   ifstream ifil;
   ifil.open("C:\\project\\image\\wking.bmp", ios::in); \\image size 40 x 60
   for(int i=0;i<54;i++)ifil.get(a);
   for(i=0;i<60;i++)
     for(int j=0;j<40;j++)
     {
	ifil.get(a);
	ifil.get(a);
	ifil.get(a);
	int g=a,k;
	if(a<0)g+=256;
	k=g/16;
	setcolor(k);
	if(a!=0)putpixel(sx+j,sy+200-i,k);
     }
ifil.close();
}

I can't tell exactly what's going on, but the problem could be that 'k' isn't getting set to 24 bit color depth, which is what you'll need to at least have if you're bitmaps are 24bit. So try setting the color depth to 24bit (or possibly 32bit) to see if the bitmap quality is better.

what doesnt look good about them in the console?