A really fun commission of a mythological creature I have wanted to draw for a while, and when a client asks, for this I couldnt resist.

Of note-

1- I really wanted to make a pretty woman under those snake scales, and do an angle to enhance the fact that her face has depth and form- not a front on portrait style composition.

2- The snakes- gorgeous but hard to get them right.  My first draft (below) had it like a headscarf with 5 snakes, it just didnt really look good, even though it was easy to “account” for all the snakes.  Then I mixed it up and made her hair more of a forest of snakes, which visually looked much better- it was just harder to make sure the physical layout of the snakes made sense.  Finally- getting the “curve” on the snake bodies was a trick, I kept drawing them straight, and it seemed wrong, I had to really get into the less simple snake layouts and make myself get into the snake anatomy (like you thought there was any?!)  Then those changes affected the physical layout at times (mentioned above) which made that part difficult to say the least.

I loved the final pencil art here, but it was a rough road.  This piece really ends up being a companion piece to “Vampire Lich King”, which is highlighted by the square shape as a framing device behind her.  You can see that other art here.

Final Draft

First draft