Stay Focused, Idiot

Its always an awesome surprise to wake up to a jam packed message box! I cant believe i got a DD on this! Thanks ~zeivin and ^savagebinn!
Now i just wish i had spent more time on it!! Gah!!
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Well, im happy to finish this, but im not sure if im completely happy with the final results.
I've mentioned that i had been working on a picture of Jasper and Fig, and here it is!!!

Jasper sometimes looses his focus when they're on a job (they're thieves/con artists) and he'll go off into some far away state of mind until Fig, who's pretty one track minded, snaps him out of it.

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Some info on the making of the picture, for those who are interested:

I worked on it for a good three days on and off, probably 15+ hours, even though it really shouldnt have taken so long. I did a lot of time consuming staring and tweaking little things, and a LOT of layering colors on top of more colors.

I wanted to try something a little bit more realistic
I ran into a lot of problems along the way, the biggest, i would say, is that i didnt plan the background out at all. I didnt really give it a second thought until i had already gone ahead and painted Jasper and Fig completely, so i ended up getting stumped with the background and unfortunately did a default bullshit blurry one to compensate.

I also didnt refine the sketch as much as i should have before i started adding color, cause i ended up having to do Fig's left hand over like 3 times, and its still not quite right.

Both dogs were originally much more warm, i ended up screwing with the color balance a lot at the end, which is something i definitely need to do more. Heres an image of what it originally looked like without the background and filters and such. [link]

Soo yeah, hopefully DA doesnt screw with the colors like it seems to be doing lately!


~ As far as critiques go, i'd love to know tips on how to make lighting look realistic, or where it might be a good place to blur something over the other, or other coloring tips on how to make things more realistic? Or how to do good backgrounds. I hate doing backgrounds, though im sure it really just depends on how much time you put into them. That one was a veerry rushed job. lol