A Painting Without Pain Isn't a Painting

Ouch. This hurts. Here's a WIP. Each time I start a painting, I go through a lot of mental anquish. The brushes don't look right, the color isn't right, the composition is a little wonky. I can't get enough detail in it. Why is that doing that? All I want to do is blend this a little smoother! OMG the LAG!

I have an pretty old HP Pavilion with an AMD 64 2.2 Ghz Processor and it can't handle large paintings. I had this set to 6000 pixels and 300 DPI but it was too lag-a-riffic! I cut it to half the size and it was better but still chugs along when I attempt to do large areas. Oh what I wouldn't give for a state of the art system and a nice Cintique. 

Sigh.

It's so pretty.

Sigh again.

Anyway. I may scrap the whole thing and start over.