I've been rather frustrated with my painting ability (or lack thereof) lately; I haven't been doing it as much given that I'm now working full time and by the time I get home from work I'm in more a mood to just sleep than actually draw, so I don't always have the time or patience to sit down and make a nice painting. Alas, that makes the skills rusty and while I think I'm in a decent swing with flat inked pieces, every time I've attempted to start a painting lately it just winds up a mess and leaves me very unsatisfied with the results.

So I decided to try applying some more detailed painterly shading to a lined piece, as kind of a bridge between the styles and ease myself back into more confident painting. Here's the result. It's not great, but decent. Hopefully doing some more of this will help get some techniques under my fingers and I'll be able to do not-ugly lineless stuff again at some point.