X-men The Last Stand - STORM

i did this for a competition that is held in our college here.. hopefully i can win.. haha! winning it can get 4 tickets to the X-men 3 premier.. im looking forward to it^^
altho my fav character from x men is cyclops, but i couldnt find a nice photo ref of him n do a nice painting of cyclops, n i din hav the confidence to do a comic version.. so i chose to paint storm.. which in this photo ref, the posture was too nice that i hav to paint it.. i want to make it a classic painting of Storm.. my 'storm'..
i did this in Corel painter 9.. using artist's oil and loaded palette knife.. there r 3 different lightnings in this painting taken from 3 different references.. and so r the clouds n fog.. from different refs too.. n Storm, Halle Berry, is another single reference.. then i combined them in photoshop n did a color thumb.. so i jz painted it following the colors of my color thumb..
this is the first time i feel so excited about painting something bcoz i feel like im creating sumthing on my own.. coz im not copying.. i created my own photo refence, my own colors, n my own composition... i cant create the character bcoz im doin this to promote the movie n she is from the movie.. well i hope this can really represent Storm n u will all like it!
btw my file corrupted once when i was doing halfway so i had to restart the whole painting.. i felt so down but actually im quite lucky coz it looks more like halle berry now^^ spent like one whole week of my holiday.. but its worthed! i think i spent around 30 to 40 hours... wow.. longest ever..