Finished piece.

Okay. I'm rather impressed with myself. For the contest I had to incorporate honey, almonds, a color that "makes you hungry" and a Valentine's theme. The girl is in honey and she's supposed to represent the almond. But if you didn't catch that with all the brown about her, she's actually holding an almond. ANd there's a hidden almond on her Converse where the star usually is.

This took me...a really long time. From sketch to finish it probably took me around 5-7 hours. My original idea was to have her floating in a jar of honey. I tried it and it looked kind of stupid (and really, really big) so I cropped it down. She's still floating in a jar of honey, you just can't see the jar!

Like I said in my dA artist comments, I'm dedicating this to my friend Andrea because she suggested a tutorial to me about an airbrush tool. And then I saw this tutorial which I kind of skimmed though. I really just messed with the brush area before I started coloring and went from there.

Her nose is probably my favorite part. I think it's adorable. Her lips were difficult to place correctly, but I think they came out nice. It's a really pretty pop of pinkish purple against the golds/browns of the rest of the piece.

I know you're not supposed to use the smudge tool...but I do. I abuse it so badly. But it makes my work look so nice! I think the smudge tool give the exact amount of softness it needs.

The linelessness around the whole figure isn't as hard as it looks (to me). I use the sketch as guidance but after the base color and first coat of shade is down I usually hide it. Okay, the lack of lines on the hands was a little hard for me, but everywhere else was okay. Especially her hair. I think it looks really nice.

I think that's it. Questions, comments, and/or feedback is ALWAYS welcome! NOW, I'm off to bed. I'm shaking from tiredness. Have a good night, guys!