DMA 101 - Character Illustration

Definitely THE hardest project I've ever done in the Adobe suite. It took a LONG time (hours and hours) to figure out how best to do everything, and then do it as close to perfect as possible. Missing class didn't help, but I looked up some tips on youtube before I got started.
FINAL PRODUCT:

This is Zoe the Elf Princess. She is a high priestess specializing in elemental magic, particularly earth-based. 

This was based on a drawing inked by gz12wk on deviantart.

My main challenges were primarily detail-oriented, and being a perfectionist this made it very time consuming (several hours over the course of a few days)

all the big pieces in their own separate layers and sublayers, mainly colour/shape based. It got confusing knowing where to start and end each piece esp the wood and leg areas so I just made them transparent and overlapped the lines. (Selection tool, Window<Transparency)

 there were so many little pieces here and it was hard because of the way the lines were drawn, it was hard to see when they started/ended. Next time I definitely want to work with a sketch that has more definite lines.

The braids were kind of a pain, I did it piece by piece on the same layer. It wasn't so much difficult as time-consuming (45min) to get everything right and forego a couple of the pixelated lines so it would look cleaner.

settled with a curved line here, a mod from the original sketch which was a straight line that was thicker at the top