This neither the first time I've done Dragon Lady in color nor my first attempt at digital coloring. However, it's my first go at more properly utilizing the properties of the digital tools and capabilities of layers. This started as a little home exercise to familiarize myself with using a tablet and parts of a graphics program I'd previously not known about or ignored. Because I don't have anywhere near the time I need at work even before officially starting to get the practice in I desperately have to have, I have to do what I can of it here at home. While it's no Intuos 4 medium, my little Graphire 2 I've had mostly unused for years is still a great help developing the hand-eye coordination I need to be able to use the Intuos properly.

I probably should have chosen something a little higher resolution than the web file for D.L.'s character sheet but I wanted to jump right in and rescanning the file would have taken too long. I chose Dragon Lady in part because someone asked about the colors of some of the characters and coloring them will be a good exercise AND I'd already done Dragon Lady in color so I'd have some basis for comparison between the digital and traditional methods. Plus, her skin tone is some of the most complex of the characters so far. It alone required 8 layers. I probably could have blended this a bit more smoothly but after getting her to this point, I was honestly afraid to do much more and the original resolution of the file wouldn't warrant the extra effort. I might have done it had I done a higher res version.