Woah! I spent a lot longer on this one than is typical of me and my short attention span.

A huge to for helping me troubleshoot my drawing of peoples as well as teaching me some of the finer points of color usage and giving me a big boost on some of my fundamental understandings of painting.

I'll furnish a better description when I'm a little less tired and unhungry. Enjoy the sauce!

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*updated description*

Hokay, now that I'm feeling a little more lucid I shall do some technical explanation.

This piece originally started as practice to convert a sketch into a digital painting. Recently I have been going straight into blocking in sillouettes before lighting and coloring them but I wanted to see if I could get sharper definitions if I did a pencil-like sketch and then paint onto it. The result was some areas of line that I decided to keep as I felt it enhanced definition.

I feel that starting with lineart does offer some degree of precision earlier on in the process. It was certainly an easier staring point to do things like the gun and her gloves. However volume was a bit more difficult to gauge, her face began too large (Her nose, was HUEG.) which was not too noticable as lineart but as I blocked the shading and the lighting in it became apparent. Once again thanks to Kaoru87 for helping me out with those issues.

The method in which I started this has it's strong and weak points. Experience and practice will determine which is appropriate when.

Lighting wise I kinda wanted to have some sort of colored secondary light source and my initial reaction was to go blue, but after a second's hesitation I told myself; "Try red. If you don't like it you can change it." So I did. It turned out ok I think

Originally I wanted to have more of her hair flowing over her collar but when I started thinking about her hair in volume it occured to me that straight hair wouldn't do it the way I had in mind, also partially a consequence of the way I drew it in to begin with. That idea had to go mostly. Kaoru87 gave me a thorough explanation on the way she does hair. I don't think I quite managed it the way she does it this time around, but I reckon I'll have to give it a go in the future. It does look pretty nifty!

All in all several nice new tools for the bag o' tricks.

Handgun is a Springfield Armory Mil-Spec 1911-A1 that I've given some conservative modifications in respect to enhancing it's carry-ability namely an Ed Brown extended thumb safety, Novak sights and a bobbed hammer. The magazine is a Wilson #47DCB. Of course, such a small girl would likely have a hard time with a 1911 as a carry piece In canon with the picture let's just say "emotional attachment" and leave it at that.

Around 3 and a half hours OC4