I think I'm finally getting somewhere with my fantasy pin-up character portraits. This is another rendering of Lin Carter's Iridar character Mnadis, who accompanies the nefarious Sarkond the Enchanter. Mnadis, with her golden tan skin and blazing red hair (natural, of course, color required by fantasy formula) entered the story as a slave and exotic dancer owned by Sarkond, and later takes on magical powers of her own when she joins forces with a Dark Power. Her life story as she tells it is rather sad, and realistic too, as she was sold to Sarkond by her impoverished father to get money for the family. In the story she is probably not much older than twenty, if she is that old at all. Of course she comes to a bad end, her short life cut off by the good guys' sword, but I guess that's the risk when you sell out to the Dark Side. Still, Mnadis is one of the more sympathetic characters in the book, and I have more sympathy for fictional characters than I do for real people.
My Photoshoppery rendering flesh and face and costume is getting better, I think. It took many days to do this. As for the figure, I will confess that I TRACED it from a swimsuit model, who is probably much slimmer than the character herself. I know, live models are best and freehand is more skillful, but I just couldn't get the figure right until I cheated. I suspect that there is a lot of this drawing skullduggery going on in the fantasy art and graphics world. I borrowed some of the skimpy costuming from bellydance costumes, though the dance stuff is much more substantial and there is more hanging beadwork. There are plenty of glitter bikinis out there, real ones worn by real burlesque babes and exotic dancers. My top ambition this year is to depict BEAUTIIFUL women. Not "character" or "interesting" or portraits of real women, but conventionally gorgeous sexy women with beautiful faces.
I will not rest, you understand. I could now depict the other members of our familiar Iridar crew with Photoshop, or I could move on to other, more modern fantasy venues where every character is unsympathetic.
Mnadis is direct-to-digital Photoshop drawing, rendered in color, about 6" x 9", March 2014. Click on the image to see a closer view.
2 comments:
Face and costume on this are pretty good. You need to exaggerate the female form a bit more for the "fantasy" look. Wider hips, larger boobs and thinner waist.
I like her pose and the expression she has--she seems realistically tough; you caught her character along with her form!
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