Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan maitiru

I made this like last month. I like (most of) the characters and art of Hakuouki but find the story somewhat uninteresting, plus I hate harem/reverse-harem. It's lucky doing wallpapers doesn't involve having to watch the anime or play the games.

Original scan (http://www.animepaper.net/art/124055/nagakura-shinpachi-abstract)

Cropped, then blew it up to 8000x5000 and vexeled in Paint Tool SAI (about eight hours over two days); it was also my first time using that program. No changes to the original art. I cut the image into four parts before vexeling because of lag, and then rejoined them and then filled in the shading. Colors were then done in Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0; I referenced a couple different official scans for these. I used a small amount of gradient but it's basically just solid color because the shadows are already so dark.

I decided to keep the background pale for a couple of reasons, the first being that I lost a bunch of revisions so I can only go back so many steps. Second, the starkness of the shadows and focus on clean lines seemed to look better on pale than a more detailed background. Last, I wanted the bright red flower petals to stand out.