The point is, I spent a good two hours airbrushing the sharkskin. With a kid's marker airbrush, a cake decorator pen, and india ink.
The background is an inkwash, which this paper was not ever designed for.

This was an experiment, mainly. To see what I could do with ink. Technically, it's a successful experiment - I was able to airbrush the ink, but a surprising amount of ink went into the process. And I messed up in more than one place - the straight leg's the only thing I think turned out okay. And I need about three year's worth of practice with the thing before I get results I like. And I'm not willing to do that.

The ink wash, on the other hand, occurred as an afterthought, and is probably one of the most interesting parts of the picture (despite swallowing the tone of the shark in a similar value; oh well, next time!) I used a waterbrush on this, and it's a tool with what looks to be some amount of a learning curve, but not an impossible one.

In the future, inkwash is the way I think I'll go. Besides, cutting out all those masks for the individual areas took 70% of the time on this picture. I'll reserve it for times when I really do need that kind of texture.

What do you guys think?