4 Hours Down the Drain

I've been spending some time lately studying different computer coloring techniques to help improve my abilities in that area. For the Headgate Art Challenge, I decided to practice some of what I've been learning. Everything was going great. I had my flat colors in, was adding shadows and lighting, and was almost finished when BAM! Everything freezes up. Now this had happened a couple of times prior while working on this same image. I think it might have something to do with not having enough RAM available and some issues with the G.I.M.P. on Windows. So I tried to save my progress and rebooted my machine. When I brought the image back up, all but the first few layers in the image were gone leaving only the line work and the two highlight layers. The image must have become corrupt so that those were the only readable layers.

Lots of work down the drain. I was shocked and sad but had learned a valuable lesson. One of the tutorials I had read on computer coloring mentioned saving multiple copies of your image should such a thing as just described happen. I thought it was a little extreme and silly. Well, now I believe.

I decided not to try and resurrect the image (I did have another really old copy in backup) and just cut my losses. Below you will see what I decided to keep.
Kind of a neat result. Sort of like some of my toned ground art.

Experience gained, lessons learned, but oh the cost.