spy sappin' mah sammich!

First semester architecture student. Given the task of taking a building style, and designing in that style. Just a showpiece of a style for a hypothetical expo.

Egyptian style, obviously. 1000sqft limit.
I've stuck with the classic pyramid style. Rising stairs and a roof that continues rising. Courtyard before the building, with (the ancestors of) Corinthian columns. Classic Egyptian figures holding up the pyramid shape (Called the Ben Ben, meaning Mound, the shape from which the world was said to have begun, thus the chosen shape for the pyramids). Light travels through a hole in the building, striking the small pyramid at first light Made of gold. Full on exposure during the summer equinox (Egpytians were crazy good astrologists).

Anyway. I'm okay handing it in like this (there's more work that goes with it), but it feels like it needs some work. From the sides (especially from the back) it looks like a shoebox. I'm thinking of throwing on some facade columns around the sides, to suggest more support structure. And less shoebox.
Advice?

Okay so, my Wacom graphire of the last 4 years finally died on me. Considering how long it's been, I really have no idea what kind of tablet I should replace it with. What's currently a good tablet with high functionality that won't kill me financially?

How is it so far?

Working on NEW RAGE

Obviously anatomical correctness was the furthest thing from my mind, but is there anything else glaringly wrong with this?

Any one good at line art?
I suck balls at it, can you give my picture a go at it?

Dear /b/,
I wanna commision a pornographic drawing.

I need a GOOD artist who's capable of drawing in a very good and dynamic style.

Got any recommendations?

Tell me what you think.

I know this isn't exactly the Artwork/Advice and tutorials board, but please bear with me for a while. I'd like to ask for a few blending tips for Painter X. The program uses bleeding to do a majority of its acrylic blending, the problem is however that if I were to try to blend the edges of a blot of color that rest on an otherwise blank and transparent layer, it assumes the blank areas to be white instead of transparent and blends with the white(exhibit no.2, ugly isn't it?). The problem can be remedied a bit by ticking the "pick underlying color", at which point the color on the current layer blends with whatever is visible on the lower layers... which works only if you don't want to change the background color anymore(exhibit no.1. Started with a blue BG with underlying color picked, then changed to green to expose the issue).

Photoshop doesn't have this problem. If one blends colors with an adjacent transparent area on the same layer, the edges simply choose to become more translucent, allowing whatever BG color to show through. How does one achieve this in Painter X? Painter can certainly handle transparency of color(commonly exhibited by the smooth eraser tool and airbrush tools as in exhibit 3). What settings do I have to mess with if I want standard blending brushes like the Wet acrylic tool to do the same?

Thank you for your time and help.