Ehehe, man, that was a long time ago already. Amazing how quickly it goes by. I'm not sure what "line" you refer to, but it's almost exclusively been brush #2 with various setting changes for specific tasks. I had just written bias then and used it for the hair, I remember, fascinated that there is use for the negative bias, too, hehehe.
It's also been a heavy play between smudge [Shift] and average [Ctrl] + [Shift], which is needed sometimes to control gradients a bit more.
The other key is to make careful strokes rather than to go wild. That sounds slow for a moment, but it gets your result a whole lot quicker as the 2.5h kind of testify, even if they felt long to me, too, hehe. It's still not my thing to paint from reference and I sure hope to shake it off completely sooner than later or transform my communication with reference once more.
When you paint without reference, you imagine form and lighting, but you do so light by light, bounce to bounce. When you paint from reference it's all right there at once and your mind just switches off, not recognizing entirely anymore what goes where for what reason. You end up just relying on what you see and not what you've understood. And that's bad!
After that it's so hard to go back to pure imagination, because it requires that much more patience to reach satisfaction. The first light and bounce won't ever be enough so you have to keep going at it until all had been considered before you can judge the quality of your artistic virtuosity.
Anyway... love Ziegfeld Girls!
