Original Anime Art Black Porcelain

Hi. I'm quite stressed. Because I am submitting original art, so I don't have the reputation of the anime/game to fall back on. Everything goes direct to me. So yeah. STRESS~~~ (screams in the background)

My first "from sketchpad to wallpaper" kind. I really did this from my trusty mechanical pencil, scanned into Photoshop, and coloured. Of course there isn't any trace of the original lineart - the lineart that I draw is meant for reference, and is ultimately replaced by vector shapes.

The full description for this wall can be read here. You can also read more about the girl...though I didn't put much about her, it's still very touchy stuff. Inspiration came from here. A couple of highlights:

1) Hair: The red highlights weren't done very well. Actually I put a lot more effort into the black, but in the end, to keep with the concept, most of it can't be seen >.< As for the reds, linear and colour dodge played me out (darn them!).

2) Left hand: Not only did I draw the thumb on the wrong side of the hand, I realized this only AFTER colouring! That's why it looks so weird - because I just did whatever I could to salvage it. I was thinking whether to remove the red marks, but it's in line with this character's story, so I decided to leave them. But they are an eyesore. BUT they're supposed to be an eyesore...(whoops)

3) Eye: Following feedback on my previous wall, I did pull up works by experts and my trusty Rurouni Kenshin official art to see where I was missing on eyes. I realized that I forgot to add light reflections, so I did just that. There's also a red and black vivid light thing that gives the "Saron" look ahahaha~~~ ANYWAY, I am a loser when it comes to seeing emotion and life in eyes. So I can't tell if I did better. Sorry. I am a failure as an artist, I know...

4) Culture: The clothing is the qipao, or cheongsam as Westerners call it. I have no idea how "cheongsam" came about, since in Chinese, it's pronounced "qipao". In any case, I love the qipao, and I will probably feature it more next time. (Plus it's easy to draw...)

5) Black Porcelain and the IR Series: Title...came out impulsively. See the journal for how it came about. "IR Series" is just the name I gave for my original art. That's all :) And, I can't really tell the exact opacity of the patterns in the background because my LCD screen has so many reflections off it. So...I just did what I could. It's not a plain black background; please look closely, I did vector a whole bunch of flowers from a Chinese paper cut. And for the signature, it's just squeezed into that small little corner there. I don't like it, but I don't know where else to put it.

Okay I think that's about all. Oh the girl took about 228 layers, but there were so many vector shapes in the black parts, my computer was lagging real bad. And I don't know why there are some weird lines on the black parts of the arms...in fact there were many oddities and weirdness abound in the painting, I have no idea why...

...Okay I feel stressed...........