OH MY WIT!!1!
I was messing around with some new paper and markers I got and decided to try and completely freehand myself and Pixel, my muse. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would, so I scanned it in, took the lineart, and painted it in.
I decided to give myself a rule: absolutely no blurs or sharps or anything! allowed. I wanted to see how well I could shape with just the tablet and paintbrush, and it was actually really nice and flowly, so that's another score for teh Kat.