I've been meaning to teach myself at least the basics of Photoshop CG work for some time, but I had three things holding me back: no tablet, no scanner, and... no Photoshop. The first roadblock was a bit annoying but there was nothing stopping me from using the mouse (less precise, but oh well). And I could get plenty of pre-scanned line art from various sources, so the lack of scanner wasn't really a problem either. That left Photoshop, which there was no way in hell I would be able to afford a copy of. So imagine my pleasure at discovering a
freeware CG program. Has a lot of Photoshop features, and although it's a bit of a hassle in places, I couldn't argue with the price.
So I downloaded and installed the sucker, opened up a few web tutorials that still seemed to apply, and then spent the afternoon practicing on Shade's B&W drawing of
my alter-ego.
Here's the result. I still don't like the shading (or lack thereof) on and around the wing, and in hindsight I wish I'd done some work on the horns too, but otherwise I think it's not half bad for my first try. Any advice/pointers/criiticism from the more experienced artists out there are always welcome.
[update: And in case you haven't noticed yet, I made an appropriate alteration to my default image.]