The Singing Unicorn

Back in 2005, doodled up a wee sketch of a gypsy styled girl giving a Unicorn a singing lesson.
I liked it, posted it on various websites and then forgot about it.
Then a few days ago, I received an email from Quarto Publishing asking me to contribute to one of their fantasy 'how to' books and since they already have a rather large file of my personal work on hand, I assumed that they were hoping I would contribute something fresh.
Fresh?
I really don't have anything that is brand new from my personal portfolio. I've been working on nothing but NDA work for the past 2 years and even though I partially own some of it, that artwork is not old enough to released to another publishing house.
I really want to push my own thoughts anyway. So I rummaged through my doodles online when came across that singing unicorn.

Even though the line work is not 'neat and tidy' it was a good candidate for colour and though the sketch was sold a while ago, I had scanned it in a 300dpi and saved that scan in my external hard drive.
Yay!

So into Photoshop and Painter it went. Now I own Painter 9 and Photoshop 7. Definitely not the latest edition of both programs but I find that Photoshop 7 is all I really need for the time being. However, I do really need to upgrade to Painter 11. Nine just doesn't respect Photoshop and colourmatching is practically non existent between the two. I've been told that Painter 11 has solved that problem so I guess that an upgrade is next on my wish list(after a new video card on my art computer).
Well here's the finished Photoshop version:

I do like this piece, but it lacks the crispness that I see in other digital artists' work that I enjoy viewing. Actually all my digital colour work lacks crispness and I feel compelled to try to only work in Photoshop to see what I can achieve.
If I don't like it, then I'll go back and just be satisfied with the way I digitally work now.

It's worth a try.

Om Shanti
~Pat Ann~

http://www.cafepress.com/whisperwillow