All right!! Have spent another hour on this, and decided to cut my losses and alter a few things that had been bugging me. I'd actually missed the bit where you mentioned that the stomach area was too long, and I agree -- I'd just been too lazy to actually fix it, as I figured it would require a lot of work. Turns out, a bit of ...

I think the issue actually is the actual shading on the bodice. The girl in the painting isn't your typical fantasy cliche, and actually is only modestly endowed. The corset is supposed to boost that: trouble is, as I mentioned earlier, am mostly guessing when it comes to how she actually would look in this particular outfit. Serves me right ...

 Right! A bit more work done on here. Some of the extra details added, anatomy tightened a little bit, and some work done on the darker tonal range for shadows. The belly button still isn't right - think it is actually too HIGH on this version, but that's a minor gripe at this point and easily sorted. Looking ...

It was her 21st, so waiting for next year not really an option. Am sure I'll do something else for her for Xmas and other celebrations next year anyways. Could I ask you to clarify some points, Yian? First I have no idea what a "form shadow" is. I have zero artistic training so could you explain that a bit for me? Is it the dark ...

PHEW!!! So work and stuff has been incredibly unkind to me the last couple of weeks, so apologies to y'all who left comments for me. I've been installing Windows 7 and trying to get everything running, I've also had a few experiments in Photoshop over the last few days to see how that works out. Either way, this is the painting as it ...

Aha! Yes, I see. Some great tips, thanks everyone! Finally got the time to do some work on the painting this evening, so I'll post some results over the next few hours as I (hopefully) improve things. I find it really interesting how many people use Photoshop for their paintings. I've done this almost entirely in Painter. I used to do ...

It's been a long while since I've posted anything in the WIP forums here, but I've found the time to work on a 21st birthday pressie for a friend, and I want to get it right. Trouble is, I don't quite have the technical grounding necessary to get this right without some bits of advice.  Most of the women I've painted in ...

Update #2. Haven't had much in the way of time or inspiration to do more on this over the last few days. Plus painting bright light on dark backgrounds screws with my eyes quickly.   Working on the sword in the foreground. Once I get the amount of glow generated right, I figure I can add in the background highlights and stuff with ...

So building on what has been said, for my second piece revisitation I decided to look at one where I can play and muck about with lighting a lot. Chosen a piece from 2003 this time. Here's the original. Beware. Its shocking!!     This was before my days of Painter. It hurts me just to look at it, but anyways. I figured I could ...

Painted mostly in Painter with copious colour correction and texturising in Photoshop. High res version @ http://www.demajen.co.uk/pics/2009/the_summer_queen_2009_LARGE.jpg