This was originally my 2017 Christmas themed pic, in which Tatiana, done up in a skintight (possibly latex?) Santa costume, slinks out from behind the tree, her gaze focused on you, and fully intent on giving you a night of merriment. I don't know what she was saying, but I'm sure it was quite dirty...

Only thing was, I wasn't able to finish it before Christmas 2017, so I left it at the flat-shaded stage intent on finishing it to post the end of the following year. Well, that turned out to be three years later, when I found myself finishing a commission two days before Christmas 2020, and thought maybe I could do a shade-and-highlight job on this pic and have two pics to post. Except that I vaguely recalled wanting to try lineless coloring with this pic and chose to give it a shot. Well, it got finished this time, but a few days past the holiday, (again).

Early on, I realized there was going to be a huge difference in the appearance of the before and after version, so before too many changes occurred to the 2017 pic, I made a copy and produced this version from that. You can see older pic here in my scraps folder.

The end result here came out so well, I couldn't let it sit for another year, as this line-less color job is so markedly different from my existing body of work, it represents a new high-water mark for my skillset, and so I present it for your enjoyment, even though the holiday has already passed.

Technical:
After working in Clip Studio Paint for the past few months, I came back to Krita to finish this one, as the original pic was done in that application and saved in its native format.

While my pieces usually have shading and highlighting, there was always some sort of lineart under it. This time, the lines would be left out of the finished image, and all the things making the character stand out from the backdrop had to be accomplished with lighting and shadows. And somewhere along the way, I decided that her costume would also look like latex, with a somewhat subdued shiny since the scene is indoors with a diffused light source. If you believed it was latex before reading my intent then mission accomplished :D. New tactic with this pic was applying highlights and shadows to the edges of the neckline of her top, giving the material a look of tangible thickness. Also striations in her irises, visible when you enlarge the image.

Krita's 'rake_bristle_dry' brush proved especially helpful in rendering the fuzzy collars around her hat, sleeves and boots, and I made numerous anatomical fixes and enhancements over the original drawing, three years of analyzing the output of higher-tier artists in countless livestreams and videos finally producing some of my best results so far. However, the amateurish-looking tree in the 2017 edition had to go. Not wanting to painstakingly redraw all those needles given how long this was taking, I extracted the meticulously-detailed tree from 2019's Itza Surprise! (which also describes how the tree was painted) and placed it in the backdrop, covering up the original 'tree'. Those of you who were attending FA:United before it's move to Virginia may recognize the photo on the wall of the Hanover Marriott's lobby.

Digital drawing done in Krita 4.3.0 and 4.4.2. Ten layers, 34MB .KRA file. Project ID# 423.
15 hours 34 minutes total editing time as per Krita's built-in project timer.