I had the pleasure of working on a character commission portrait doing my favourite type of character – female warrior/ ranger kind of characters. The character had previously been started by another artist who was sadly unable to complete the work, so I was given a great concept sketch which was really loose, but gave me some great starting points. The client pointed out some actresses the character reminded her of, and I worked from there.

This is a digitally tinted and textured painting, which started with a pencil sketch on tracing paper. I love sketching on the velum like surface. I then transfer and clean up the sketch in Photoshop, adding a background. A tinted, textured paper is added, then I add the colours

An alternative sketch where I did the head and some details in Photoshop, while tracing over the original sketch to change the costume a bit. The pose was a little closer to the original concept, but the costume was not – I was a bit worried the first sketch would be too simple.