Thong Warrior Princess

This is a color version of the character I rendered for the Scarlet Letter, a fantasy-based newsletter I was asked to draw a cover for. I was inspired by artists Like Larry Elmore and Boris Vallejo, who tend to play up the female form. Hence the questionable protection from the waist down . Honestly though, if anyone's going to bring the business with a sword or axe to that area of the female body, they're just really cruel and probably not right in the head.

The original size is about 8.5 x 11, and began on sketchpaper, which you can view in my scraps section if curious. After getting it into Photoshop, I began to stretch her out a bit as she had very little in the way of neck or torso. I traced out the cleaner sketch on a new layer, keeping in mind varying the line weight based on shadow, weight of the object (heavy for armor, light for skin), and distance from the viewer.

After getting a nice inked version, I inserted a layer beneath the lines and dropped in all of my basic colors I'd use. Then on the same layer I just came up with variations of hue and intensity using the color picker to throw in light and shadow as it made sense.

The trees in particular were challenging, as it was difficult to keep them from looking like mutated stalks of broccoli.