I should do a followup where she's in her Mega form and absolutely JACKED. ... Or not. That's not really my thing.

EDIT: SPEEDPAINT is up! (link) Whew, okay. So recently at college we had our first life drawing session with a nude model. I chickened out. I was too shy. Anyway, if I'm going to be able to deal with a naked person in real life, drawing some using a combination of lots of photos should help. Although, now that I think about it, the model was a lot more naked than this, so...Anyway, remember? You know, pretty much the only time I drew a picture and couldn't come up with a title?Well, anyway, I felt like doing Absol justice with something better-drawn. I still kept up the tradition I seem to have of all of my anthro Pokemon drawings (except for the two most recent) being a bit rough and sketchy, but I still spent a lot of time polishing it up....But not nearly as long as usual. Yeah, so this kind of works as a sequel to Umbra, right?It's another female anthro Dark-type Pokemon serving as anatomy practice (for this, I wanted to practise muscles, which led to the epic pun in the title of this pic). There are two more similarities, too: the first is that they both took way less time than previous pictures of a similar quality. Stripes [with Speedpaint!] , from November 2016, took about 8.5 hours. That was due in part to spending about 2.5 hours on lineart (obsessively smoothing them down so they looked perfect even though nobody would see them anywhere close to full resolution), and about 4 hours on the colour and shading. 4 hours! Then, I was using my "blending" method for shading, where I would roughly build up the tones I needed, then blend them using the colour picker tool to smooth out the midtones. But even without the shading, Sequins and Glue [with Speedpaint!] , from February 2017, took about 5 hours. Why? because I obsessed over the lines for so long!Enter May 2017's. I specifically wanted to make the process quicker, so after spending hours obsessing over making the sketch perfect, the lineart took less than half an hour. Admittedly, there were less lines required than the other two drawings, but I managed to do it so much faster than usual simply by allowing a little roughness to stay in there. And it worked better than expected! I didn't record this one being drawn, so I can't be sure, but I think it took about 5 hours. A significant improvement, I'm sure you'll agree. And that was without polish like smoothing out shading, or cleaning up some bits where lines intersected!The other similarity between this Absol drawing andis that they feature extensive use of Photoshop's Mixer Brush, something I only discovered shortly before drawing. It does a similar job to the "blending" method of shading, but is much faster, and is somewhat harder to use/control (mainly because there are so many settings on the darn thing). This pic was me experimenting with the Mixer Brush: figuring out the settings, trying to come up with new ways of using it, etc. For this pic, I also didn't do any lineart, which is a bit strange for me - I just cleaned up the sketch a lot. Every element of the picture aside from the sketch involved the Mixer Brush, on a couple of different settings for different things. For instance, I found out that reducing the wetness makes it good for shiny things, like Absol's horn and tail. I drew a light-coloured line, then a slightly dry Mixer Brush did a great job of spreading it out and blending it in to make it look shiny. In the end, I had to use a combination of the Mixer Brush and the old "blending" method, because the former is proving to be kind of difficult to use - I just needed to guide it by laying down colour in around the right places, then the Mixer Brush could just smooth them out.So, the big question is, how long did this end up taking? Well, the sketch actually didn't take that long - I struggled with the hands a lot, but it still came in at about 1 hour 15 minutes. I had two failed attempts beforehand, but on my third try it actually turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. Then the cleanup and shading took about 2 hours 35 minutes, so the final time was just over. Wow. I recorded this, too, so you can watch the speedpaint by clicking the link above (I wonder what my YouTube viewers will think of this). So, yeah. Under 4 hours. That's ridiculously fast by my slow, methodical standards. And I really like how it turned out! I think this is the best shading I've ever done. Here's a view without the lines so you can see:You can actually see everything with just the shading! And from an anatomical standpoint I think this might be my best as well: abs are surprisingly hard to draw, and the hips of a slim/muscular person are a bit complicated too. But they both turned out great! (Or at least I think so.)Oh, and, uh... yeah, here's another similarity to. It might just be me, but I think they both turned out way hotter than I intended. I'm really wondering how, considering I deliberately avoided pinup tropes like eye contact with the viewer (though Umbreon's eyes unintentionally ended up like that), bedroom eyes, sexy poses, etc. Eh, whatever.Here are a couple of shading tests I did before starting. They both involved blending the lines into the drawing as well, but I decided against doing it in the final drawing.