Recursive Frustration

Okay, this requires a bit of explanation.
I'm taking "Advanced Two-Dimensional Digital Art" this semester, which is basically a digital painting class although it's a little more abstract than that.

This was the first assignment for the class. We were supposed to create an "object self portrait"; basically choose an object that has some kind of personal significance and work it into a self portrait somehow. The thing is, we were supposed to, like, actually THINK about it and try and get some kind of actual MEANING into the image, which is not something I'm at all accustomed to doing.

SO, this is what I came up with. The "object" is the mountain. Basically, it's about how I'm completely obsessed with mountains and deserts and large rock formations in general (as pretty much anyone who looks at this gallery can probably tell ), but I'm eternally frustrated by the fact that nothing I paint can never look as spectacular as the real thing. Hence, me sitting in front of an epic mountain looking defeated. However, since the image is itself a painting of a mountain, it suffers from exactly the same problem that it's attempting to illustrate. So I smashed the screen.
So yeah, "Recursive Frustration," or, "If You're Going to Order Me To Be Pretentious I Will At Least Make Sure That Whatever Meaning I Come Up With Will Actually Make Sense Instead of Just Being Some Smug Postmodern Non-Sequitur."

Also, I have no real idea what my hair looks like from the back, but I'm pretty sure it looks at least that silly.

Ironically despite the point of the image this actually ended up being the best mountain I've ever painted. I might crop it and move the layers around do make a decent non-smashed version and upload that; the painting itself turned out quite well.

Anyway, stats.
I started working on this on the school computers and then took it home, so:
Photoshop CS2/4
Intuos2/4
Maybe 14 hours or so? I dunno I did like 2/3 of it in one retarded all-nighter due to grossly underestimating how much work I had left to do >.<
Also, in an unprecedented move I used a photographic texture on the dirt in the foreground. It was from my own photography, and it doesn't really make the image look less painted so I guess it's okay.