Oh my, that is very realistic!

Once you start doing every little hair, you simply can't stop! :P I swear, doing the hair like that becomes 'muscle memory' after a while - I think I was probably in autopilot mode!

That is pretty fucking amazing! How you colored that eye?

Well i remember myself coloring Klaus'D's b/w scetches, telling myself like it should have cartoony look, but all i came up looked too realistic and it was not rather good for his artwork...

I agree that sometimes realism can just not look 'right' - it sometimes doesn't have a lot of 'soul' to it, which is why in this case I tried to go for some moody lighting to give it a little more of an edge. Sometimes though - you're quite right - cartoonish is the way to go. :D

The eye... oh, gosh, I don't even remember what I did now, since I did it three years ago. I don't think I used any particular technique other than just painting what I saw, but in something with a clear, shiny 'layer' over it like an eyeball, it's important to use layering. I imagine that what I did was lay down a very dark green, apply a bit of highlighting to that and add the pupil, then spend some time with the brighter colours doing the hard-edged highlights that create the shiny texture of the eye. Tell you what, perhaps I'll paint a few more eyes and do a tutorial sometime. :)

I just mean the eye looks amazing!

Oh right! Heehee - well, thank you!

That's really cool!

Thank you! :D

....you're trying to tell me that's not a photo?

...I don't believe you

Definitely a painting! Though I haven't done every strand of fur on a beastie for some time now... I think if I did it for every painting I'd strain my wrist.
Oh, you can see some closeups of this, if you like - I just found some in my scraps gallery on dA: http://i48.tinypic.com/9gagr7.jpg
You can see the paintstrokes in those :D

But.... the eye, it's so real! Even the paintstrokes are real, including the whiskers! :P

Seriously, you just moved up a few ranks in impressiveness :D ;)

Holy shit! Its looks so real!

Wow, that is amazing! Even the reflection in the cat's eye! Look close enough and it almost looks like you can see a reflection of a person. Again, this is totally amazing. your eye for detail is really like none other I've ever seen.

This is one of the best photorealistic pieces I have ever seen!! :)

Oh wow. That's beautiful.

That's just insane. I can't wrap my head around how real this looks.

Once again if it hasn’t of said painting in the title I would have thought it was a photograph by the thumbnail.
The level of detail in the fur is amazing, as is the eye.

This kinda thing makes me wonder if I'm ever going to get that good. Its inconceivable to me how anyone can even get a /tool/ to behave so specifically, as needed, let alone have such a high level of comprehension what you are actually looking at. How long did this take?

yea....I definitely thought it was a photo at first glance until I inspected the little bit of fur around the eye. Beautiful work!

Wow. Thought this was a photo. Had to zoom in and then I could see that it was a painting.

Going to guess that in your life you probably got some daily deviations.

looks like he trace-painted it in corel painter. or auto-painted it in painter. either way it look like painter has something to do with this

Excuse me?

I'm not sure if you were intending to reply to me again or not, but I just wanted to clarify that I painted this picture from scratch in Photoshop. If you want to see more of my work, please look in my gallery. Thanks.

This can't be a painting, it's lies! It is a photo! A super detaield photomajig!
Silliness asides, this is an awesome picture of awesomeness that has redefined my definition of awesome realisitic painting

This is incredible! Love it!

Thank you! <3