Simple drawing, cging process

I'm bad at it. Maybe that's why it takes me so long to cg. Importing and exporting between SAI and Photoshop is driving me crazy! SAI crashes if I open CS3 along with it, so I always have to close it. If that wasn't annoying enough, I always have to open CS3 around 5 times before it detects pen pressure!

Progress pics of cging from the last few days (lines= 5 hrs? I had to change her hair SO many times. Also her eyes, I did it three times. And the decoration on her chest took me a long, long time).

First I lineart my sketch with the pen tool in black (or brush tool in CS3). Then I check smoothness of the lines over a darker colour (easier to see gaps idk why).

Then I usually like to export to photoshop for magic wand + picking base colours. Then back to SAI for first level, second level, third level, high lights and low lights (I find the colour wheel very useful at this stage). I like doing eyes in CS3 because of the pen tool- gives very sharp, precise edges^^

Here I've added in the other shades, but the gold looks like it needs to be darker since I changed my layer to a special effects layer on SAI. I probably need to fix the hair highlights and stuff. I also need to soften/ blur the shadings for the hair together. If you compare to the last pic, I've erased a bit of the skin shading so it doesn't look as harsh.

I added in a little background plan-- so it's very likely going to be petals. Megurine Luka FTW.

(several hours later)

I didn't end up softening her hair... but I made a crappy bg to go with it. I fixed the gold and the shading in her hair.

You can't really see the difference here. Oh well. I drew new petals.

After another two months, this picture is closer to completion! Added in some effects and background in photoshop and finished first level shading. The effects are so distorted I'm thinking BRS doesn't need much more deeper levels of shading.