Number One

I went back to black and white because focusing on color while trying to paint any sort of shiny surface or complicated shapes in the armor was driving me BONKERS. But I liked the end result! Last year was super frustrating because it was hard to figure out how armor worked. I don't understand how concept artists can whip out detailed armor sketches in around 30 minutes sometimes, it's amazing!

All in all, the whole thing took me probably around 15 hours. I kept redoing her face because I didn't like how it looked the first two times, but the vast majority of the time was spent on her armor! Originally, I wanted to try CT's armor, but something about the front of hers just never came out right, so I switched to Carolina.

Painted mostly in Paint Tool SAI, then cleaned up and enhanced in CS5 C:

if you're on tumblr, you can see it on my artblog here