He's already dead

Weeeeellll...whew. That's all I can say about this picture. God I have never spent this much time coloring a picture before...not even the cel shading on my Shishio and Kenshin pic. Actually, it took longer to color this one than it did to ink that one, lol. I'd say I spent a good...i don't know, 8 hrs coloring this. Now I realize that it might not show, but I didn't just use the burn tool on this pic. Actually....this is more of a digital painting than anything. This is the very first picture I have done with Corel Painter, and my dear God in heaven I love that program. All of the coloring on this is layer upon layer upon layer of color, like a painting, which is why I said this is a digital painting (ok, maybe that was a bit redundant). Anywho, the mist layer kind of obscures some of the shading that I liked, but it gave it a presentation that I felt tied the entire picture together.

Now as for the picture itself...this marks the end of my Haku and Zabuza pics that I previously posted. All of them have now been colored. In my own humble opinion, I think I have steadily progressed as I have gone along with them. Unlike my other pictures, which I took all of the blood and gore out of...I kinda can't do that with this one. It just...well, given the content, just wouldn't look right, lol. This thing is a little macabre for my usual tastes, but I thought it was a very touching scene in the manga, and I hope that I have been able to recreate it. If it wasn't for the fact that I would keep reposting the same images, I'd go back and do the others like this..but that's what progession is about, you just go on and do more things as you improve. I feel this is the best coloring job that I have yet done, and I am a little proud of this. I realize there are structure problems (which it isn't necessary to point out, I spent 9 hrs looking at this pic, I promise I know where they are), but I didn't want to change it.

Comments and criticism are always welcome and appreciated.