Digital Painting

I have recently bought myself a nice Wacom intuos 4 to help me with texture painting and sculpting etc, whilst playing around with it i thought id give digital painting a go. Since finishing uni iv not had access to a decent tablet and now iv got one i dont know how i went without for so long, its such a nice tool to own. I originally bought the tablet because i wanted to create some vector reference images for modelling (because im a bit tight and dont want to have to buy them when i know i can make them).

I have never really had much of an interest in anything other than modelling and texturing so to me it seemed something worth having a go at which Im quite glad  i did as so far it has been quite an enjoyable experience. Its nice sometimes to not have to worry about 3 dimensions and what you see in front of you is what you get, no hidden glitches out of sight of the camera.

Anyway, i chose to paint my dog for my first piece and so far so good. Im not too sure what im going to do when i get round to painting in the fur detail as it looks a really tedious job but il cross that bridge when i get there.

Heres my first work in progress so far, i put the outline down first just to help me get an understanding of the flow of the fur and to also familiarize myself with the tablet (which didnt take too long!).

Hopefully the rest of the painting wont take too long, the background will most likely take a fair bit of time, im thinking of putting her on a pretty Cornish beach because lets face it, it may be a while before she sees one for real!

And heres the original photo for the painting: