soooo finally done!!! ^^

this started out as a simple colouring practice for me, i just wanted to colour the head and nothing more... but i kinda got carried away and decided to do the whole damn rest

since this was planned as a mere colour practice i started with a rough outline sketch of the original image which was a poorly scanned and small picture of lightning with lots of text on it -_-

colouring is 100% by me!
no overpainting, altering, manipulating of the original picture... just lots of time and patience! i tried to get as close to my reference as possible.

there are parts i like and there are parts i hate.. but i'm certainly not going to change anything else, i'm just sick of seeing this thing

tools: photoshop, wacom intuos 2
time: 20+ (didn't count)

and has someone an interest in a speaking cactus? because i swear the one standing next to my pc started to whisper perverted things to me while i worked on this pic last night.. scary little thing

lightning, ffxii © square enix

PS: and yes... that gunblade was drawn too! it was a pain in the ass but also muuuuch fun, i learned a lot