Hey, foxy lady!

This was meant to be an all-commission week, but then I remembered I should probably map out the Precocious story that's due to start next week. The result is a few days lost to comics. It's ok, it just means commission week will be stretched to two or three weeks. (It was impossible to get them all done in one week anyway.) It will all get done. Life will be good. All will be happy.

This commission is the big scary one, so I'm breaking the process into manageable chunks that won't intimidate me. Today: Playing with poses (and a bit of outfit tweaking)!

This lady is magical gal, so I played with how magic will appear. In short: I don't know WHAT I'm doing yet, but I'll figure something out. Anyway, on to the poses!

1)On the above left we have my closest attempt to match the outfit reference I was given. I probably shouldn't have improvised there, but I did. Hey, it's only the sketch stage. I can be stopped. I went with a confident pose, as she's just starting to fire her spell up.

2)On the right, I went more magical girl, with her in the middle of a display. I also extended the dress, roughed in some embroidery and generally made it more feminine.

3)Here, on the above left, I went with a more playful pose. I like the little ball of magic in her left hand, and the larger spell in the right can turned into twisty "magic rope" or be depicted as floating magical balls, a la will-o-the-wisp fun.

4)I left out the magic sparks in the one on the right, but imagine little wisps above her, illuminating the scene. The main purpose here was to see if a long dress would look good.

5)On the left, we have a variation of pose 2. This one is less demonstrative and more sly. There's also another attempt at a longer dress, which isn't as fancy this time.

6)I struggled to make this one work on an index card sketch, which probably means this idea is way beyond my skill level, but I wanted to display it anyway. In this, she's surrounding herself with that "magical rope" stuff. Eh, it looked like it had potential in the sketchbook.

It should be noted for all these sketches that I greatly simplified the hairstyle, which has been chosen, to make sketching quicker. I also happened to be a bit sleeve-heavy today, which can easily be removed. Details like accessories and jewelry were largely ignored for this. Also ignored was the setting, which will start figuring into the composition later.

I'll keep chipping away at this one until everyone's happy!