I was inspired by some other artist blogs to try a style without concrete outlines. I think I only managed a half-success on that front, and the color turned out kinda messy... but there was something freeing about working mainly on one layer in Photoshop. Normally I end up with 10-20 layers all with different colors or shadows or whatever. But this time I think I ended up with 2, and mainly because I was afraid of screwing up the animals when I drew the reins on top.
I think it's good practice for being more confident in setting down "paint" as well. I wasn't relying on the undo button nearly as much, instead if I made a mistake I'd just draw over it. This would be essential should I ever get Colors for my DS, as that software doesn't have an undo button. And obviously should I ever decide to paint with a real canvas and brush, this would come in handy as well. :)
But yeah, overall I was happy with how different the style turned out, as compared to something like this, where I was deliberately going for hard lines and outlines:
