(A brief tutorial on the steps I take when creating a piece of digital art. Everything below is copyrighted to Liezl Buenaventura and may not be taken for archival purposes without permission.) I've been painting digitally since 1996, having begun with nothing more than a mouse and Windows' free paint program. Over the years I've evolved into using a tablet (WACOM), and am currently on Adobe Photoshop 7.0. I don't use Paintshop Pro or Illustrator for my paintings, (I prefer to keep my work on a single program), but these are also viable alternatives. Below is a breakdown of the steps I most frequently use when creating digital art. I begin and end digital pieces using only the computer because I feel that digital art is best created sans any physical mediums. I created Wishing for Wings and Mariko with PSP 6.5 and a mouse, and believe that it is indeed possible to craft a painterly style even with limited instruments. 1) I personally never start with a white canvas, (a habit I picked up from my oil painting days), and the step that defines the whole mood of the piece is the hue of the underpainting. Since I was planning a simple head shot, I chose a soft, dead kind of brown to be my base. The color of my 'pencil' was also chosen to match-- a brown several shades darker on the same pallette. A basic line drawing followed this, (the simpler the better), drawn in a layer on top of the base background.   2) I then began coloring in the main shapes with a soft, large brush. Very subtle color changes for the eyes, nose and mouth, but the majority is done in the chosen base skin color. These colors go directly on top of the line drawing, so go light or you might lose your main shapes. 3) Adding in shadows is a bit tricky, as going several shades darker than your base color might end up giving you a too-bright shade. I'd advise moving several spaces to the left (to dull the hue), and down (to darken the shade), on your color pallette. (I don't advise using the dodge/burn tool because the colors become way too bright-- the resulting image ends up looking like it's bathed in fluorescent light.)   4) More color filled in. The detail color, (i.e. eye, lip, cheek) is painted in, this time using a soft brush about half as big as your previous brush. More small shadow detail added. 5) Base highlights added here as markers, then smaller dots added in on top of them. Hair color filled in.   6) More hair added, further detail painted. It is at this point that the original sketch has been all but covered completely, and the painting has morphed into something a bit different from the original. Drawing in a bit more detail to further sharpen the features should be considered. 7) More shadows and highlights added to face and hair, further lip and eye detail explored. Introduced another color to the pallette to add a bit of character, light source fleshed out.   8) Final shadows and highlights determined, light source taken into further account. Added final detail to hair and lips, general clean up of edges and hair. Further contrast of the face in general and the sharpening of eyes in particular executed. Finished result, yet another of my happy gay elves.