This work is in honor of my friend Aleena, who has helped me greatly in the last month. I was able to try all sorts of new techniques with this piece, which has been by far the most personally enjoyable to date. For those interested, the original Photoshop file was 151 MB on disk, and over 500 MB in memory (BIG sucker), and would not have been possible using my old methods. I have switched to doing nearly all my painting on a single layer, which is separated using pre-created channels for the different parts (flesh, tentacles, clothing, hair, etc…).