First Serious Attempt at Digital Painting

So I've started looking into developing my skills in digital painting, just mainly as another creative outlet from working in 3D. I like the idea of producing and "completing" something nice in a shorter period of time as opposed to working on animated projects which take up a lot more time to develope. Sometimes you don't always feel like running a marathon, you just wanna jog around the block, so to speak. So this is going to be my jog around the block (hopefully)...

Now as I've started to venture into digital painting, I've come to many realizations of my skill level - the BIG one being that I suck! :P I've really let myself go over the years, drawing wise, and so after working on this first "test portrait", I know that I need to work on my proportions, improve on drawing hands and work on posing...just to name a few things.

With my approach to the actual digital painting side of things, I've been following the technique that artist Charlie Bowater uses in her video tutorial - http://vimeo.com/10743423

If you haven't seen her work before, check it out here - http://charlie-bowater.deviantart.com/gallery/
She's amazing.

I've got a long way to go with the painting technique - I need to work on my blending of values, lighting and colouring. But it's been really fun and very therapeutic. Anyway, the most important thing to improve in anything is to practice, practice, PRACTICE!

Here's a WIP sample of my first proper attempt at digital painting.

This is the original sketch I used. *shudder*

I was originally going to just draw the head and shoulders, but since I had a large canvas, I decided that I'd give the body a go. The pose is rather static and awkward to say the least.