this was sort of an exercise in using reference. i decided to push towards a more realistic result by observing photos of sunsets, perspective from below (for the face), jellyfish, and hands. i think that i focused on this too much and the picture turned out too static, but it was good practice.

drawn in photoshop CS3 with an intuos3 tablet. textures from cgtextures.com , tips on how to use textures can be found here - [link] and for other tips check out my f.a.q - [link]

EDIT: resubmitting, because apparently it did not show up in poeple's message centers. wtf?? sorry to those who commented and faved on the other version.