Forest scene, Tanathe's tutorial

I decided to give Tanathe's speedpainting tutorial a try. Thank you for inspiring me to paint again.
Haven't done this type of painting before, and happy how it turned out!
Time taken: ~3hrs on Photoshop

I will try to do studies(?) like these more often.

My new monitor & CatSnakeToad

        Wow, Finally got around to actually drawing/painting something. 

        Right before spring break I shelled out for a monitor that I can connect my laptop to. I figured it would be conducive to my productivity, sitting posture, less stressful on my eyes, more awesome for drawing and gaming...and I'm glad to say that it has been.  8D My quality of life definitely hopped up some notches with this purchase and Metro 2033 has never been more traumatizing. The colour is great. I can finally properly calibrate my display the way I want to (notice the difference between two representations of the exact same image; my laptop screen is glossy and gives off a washed-out appearance so I never really knew what things actually looked like - I found it very helpful to confirm my calibration settings by comparing printouts and its look on different devices).......

My Setup (click to enlarge)

        Anyway, last night/this morning I thought I'd do an exercise to see what I could come up with - I'm quite pleased considering how it's been a loooong time since I last drew/painted something with my tablet. For a while I was afraid that I was rusty beyond repair, but I mustered up. I love drawing creatures and am having a lot of fun doing this (means a lot to me 'cause it motivates me to keep drawing more often & improve). I've put in some of the steps and thought processes I went through for my own future reference and for anyone that might find it helpful;

        Originally I just wanted a snake-toad hybrid inspired by bush vipers which is why I only have references for those pulled up on my screen. I started off with a round pinkish blob on my canvas and it happened to look vaguely like a cat, and I thought, why not? So I blocked in some more with a hard brush to give it a more defined cat shape and went from there. 

        Since I still wanted it to have a rather toady appearance I shrank the height and modified its limbs to resemble a toad's posture. However, I imagined this to be a small (squirrel sized) critter that is capable of running and leaping around quickly so I gave it a more upright position (monkey-like).  I fussed around with that for some time (used the transform tool shamelessly) and  flipped the image horizontally every now and then to keep myself in check. 

        I almost scrapped the tail but decided to keep it since I figured it would be very helpful for balancing and wrapping around twigs (like a chameleon) and whatnot. I wanted the main focus to be directed to its face so I put a bit more detail in there .  I might add scales someday!

I hope this is a revival that endures. I'll try to draw something at least once a week.