/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

I'm trying to get into anime art and I want to have a generic coloring style like you see big shot anime artists churn out. It's so clean, like magic, you don't even see the brush strokes.

So I spent a few hours doing a study on a pic of this girl from SAO. Originally I just wanted to see if I could get a similar result of the green part of the skirt completely shaded, so I actually just started from the bottom and built my way to the head, thats why the proportions and pose weren't planned.

also I didn't use a lineart layer obviously

Anyways the skirt went decently enough (though definitely not as clean as in the original pic) and it was kinda fun so I kept going and added the rest

After about 2 hours I realized it was literally going to take something like 14 hours to finish this, It takes me so fucking long to blend my shit smoothly so that it looks like the original pic. I can't just "lol all you need is hard round brush" because I'm not going for a painterly style.

I'm using hard to soft round brush paired with smudge tool and sparse use of temp layers to blend and this shit doesn't get any easier.

I see anime artist speed paints and they just fly through the process, however I don't speak jap and english guides on youtube are so fucking basic in comparison...

What the hell is the actual process for doing this? It just looks so much more detailed and beautiful than what is taught on /ic/ and you never see this level of clarity and detail on sites like deviantart

I'm gonna be honest I"m never going to figure this out on my own. I'm not that smart. I'm raving to keep drawing but I really don't want to spend the next year making trash art when I'd rather nail the process at the start and build on that.

So how is it done? What's the layer work flow like? When do I use masks? How the fuck do they shade so "perfectly"?

And I'm curious, what's the loomis of the jap world?