Photoshop CS3 is more efficient than I'd ever hoped. Painting with a mouse alone is pretty easy. I've also borrowed a small tablet from ~Claw7705, and when my computer actually recognises it correctly, it works very well. As far as I know it doesn't know the difference between no pressure and heavy pressure, but that hasn't stopped it from helping. Using the mouse for technical matters and the tablet for the painting itself has been very effective.

So far I've retouched the Stephen Colbert portrait and hope to have it finished soon. I began work on two new digital pieces: A portrait of the integral Halo character Dr. Catherine Halsey, and a practice concept piece for a sort of dinosaur-lizard. The more time I put into "Lizardsoar," the more detailed the textures become. It's starting to look pretty good after 3 hours; it's not scaly or hard yet, but the skin of the creature is creased and all over the place and makes it look pretty dangerous. I'm not very quick at actually finishing pieces, but pouring time into any one of them seems to make them better at a reasonable pace.

The Halsey piece was started without much of a reference. I began with some vague lines from a portrait of Cortana, one of the AI's based upon Dr. Halsey. I don't have a great sense of facial proportions, but Photoshop let it be sharp so far. THe face looks female, and potentially not even freakish!

I'm glad that I started using photoshop this summer. Every week of use has made it more useful to me. Everyone interested in visual art should use it.