This was my first attempt at digital painting in Adobe Photoshop. It seemed promising at first, but soon spiraled into horrible, horrible mess. It might be a good idea to mention that not only have I not really done digital painting too often, but I was one of the few art students in the world that avoided painting as I wasn't a massive fan of it, so I'm effectively having to educate myself in the fundamentals of traditional painting techniques alongside the Photoshop methods. Not that I'm using this as an excuse, I look forward to the challenge! Just don't expect anything overly Van Gogh just yet. Unless you count his reputation when he was alive, in that case, expect everything overly Van Gogh.
Right then, back on topic. This next attempt was my way of trying to merge my natural style of drawing with the silhouette technique Phil demonstrated. It worked out somewhat well, although I think the best idea would be to do as I'm told and to not attempt to go wandering off into uncharted territory just yet.
This was simply a sketch that I was midway through converting to a silhouette, but whilst doing this I noticed the pattern I'd laid out resembled the heavy, ink-like shading found in comic books, and I wanted to preserve it. It was totally off topic and I'm not saying I'm going to follow this particular path, but it seemed nice enough to keep it for future reference, as somewhat of a 'happy mistake'.