I've been painting on this sketch (bottom left) as you can see it progress in the top images, it gradually change and move away from the sketch.
And because it's just all paint it can move and develop.. so I quickly inked the sketch like I would NORMALLY do and coloured it in.

Totally different.
The lines really lock the drawing in place, for better or worse.

I still don't really know what I want with the character, though, somewhere between these. I don't want him to be physically feminine 'cept for having long hair (which he doesn't let down anyway) and being clean shaven and all that.

I actually learned stuff from "painting method" that I can use in my lined style. I also need to start grabbing a reference, that worked wonders for the face on the last stuff with the mage aka his boyfriend.

still really oversaturated/unfinished/sloppy/etc, just here for comparison.