Octopus and Cigarette

As requested a bit more information regarding the creation of this here illustration.
I drew this on plain laser-printer A3 paper, mostly with with a h2 pencil, but with a h3 for some minor details. Under normal circumstanceses then it's not a good idea to draw entirely with such light pencils (and on so crummy paper), but I'm strapped for cash so I didn't have much choise - yet have I've been experimenting with different kinds of pencils and paper vs. scanning them into the computer lately, and this had an interesting result.
The very pale lines didn't vary all that much from the bits of dust and grains on the scanner glass as well as the naturally occuring shadows in the paper, so when imported into photoshop and level-adjusted then much of the seen above texture is already there. Neat-o!
Then I adjusted the paper color to my likeing and used some custom hi-def watercolor brushes to add the color to the squid. I tried also coloring the girl but found the minimalistic use of color more effectful. I did however paint her skin slightly lighter than the background color to make her pop out more. Lastly I used the watercolor brush set to make the white smoke, painted the line art red with a low alpha blue/red/yellow gradient ontop, and used a grunge brush set to add the worn paper texture as a final detail.

There is a point in this picture, just not a very interesting one. My main goal was aesthetical practice - the subject matter was just the excuse so to speak. Quite simply this is just inspired by my continuously failing attempts to quit smokeing. Not very deep I must admit.

Thanks for viewing