The Beast

This is my first attempt at freehand digital painting (just the mouse, no tablet). The troll is based on Bethesda's trolls from The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, but it was painted in Gimp from scratch (except the general outline which I based on a screenshot to keep right proportions - well, I'm still a newbie). It took me a few days on and off but finally I think I can upload it. There's probably a billion things that I could improve here, so if you have any suggestions or crticism, I'm all ears.

In the process I read tons of PS tutorials and used a few custom brushes (Dave Nagel's hair brushes and Ron's Slime should be of special note). I also used a lightning brushes set for hair. For the backdrop I used a modified game screenshot from a friend of mine: discovery1 from tesnexus (a great screenshooter!). The initial idea came from reading DanLuVisiArt's awesome tutorial for painting Venom character danluvisiart.deviantart.com. And obviously the general concept of the creature comes from Bethesda.

Enjoy