This is a finished version of line art by David Cousens (www.CoolSurface.com). It came from the "New Media Coloring Book Volume 2" thread at ConceptArt.org. In this thread, artists post their line art, and other artists color the lines using whatever techniques they want.

Since I knew that I wouldn't have access to a tablet at all times while working on this piece, I decided to go back to my old, pre-tablet methods, using only Photoshop and a mouse. I picked up a few cool new tricks along the way, but definitely reminded myself why I got a tablet in the first place.

I'm sure it's not perfect, and that I could probably spend a great deal more time adjusting and tweaking the piece, but I decided that it was time to call it done and move on to other works. It was a lot of fun, and a great exercise working with someone else's lines.

Work done at actual size, 945px x 645px over 3 days and a total of (best estimate) somewhere around 10-20 hours.

The original post, with uncolored lines, is here, and the Coloring Book thread itself can be found here. The tutorial the piece was originally created for is here, though I didn't see it until long after I'd finished the piece.

Final version posted with permission. Enjoy!

UPDATE: According to David, this piece has been published in the November, 2007 issue of Digital Arts magazine, on their "letters" page. I sent them the piece shortly after posting it here and, apparently, they liked it! Very cool.