First Time Doing Digital Painting

This shows my first (left) and final (right) try at the assignment.

So I've never done any digital painting until now, which was part of an assignment for my Game Art 3 class. The assignment was suppose to give us inspiration for the micro environment & character(s) that we are suppose to built and since the environment that I'm creating is a Japanese zen garden, a geisha was the first thing that came to mind.

I looked for a sketch online that I liked and that I could use to do the assignment for since I didn't know if I could create one that I would like. After doing a quick search for geisha sketches, I found this one that I really like from a Deviant Art member called Melody ( link to her original sketch ) and I loved it right away.

I took it into Sketch Book and did a quick trace, and after getting help from people in my group I made some modifications to the sketch like: rounding out her face a bit to give it a more feminine look, as well as giving her bigger feet, and changing a bit her left elbow.

The picture above shows my first try, and I think I didn't do a good job with the color palette since it looks a little too dark. I redid the assignment after doing the changes I mentioned above with a new color palette, and I think it looks much better than my first try. I also found that it took less time and I was able to put in a little more detail in the shadows the second time around.

My classmates and professor have suggested that I should keep working on it and add a pattern to the dress. I will definitely keep working on it and add a pattern since it would make it look so much better, I just have to find some reference images that I like. That is all for now, thanks for reading.