Hello HIVE! In this post, I would like to introduce Queen Aife of the Dekai. This is actually fanart of Fell Dragon which is authored by @lex-zaiya. I really enjoy her writing and I have the privilege of receiving her writing in advance as one of her "guinea readers". This means she gets to ask me all sorts of difficult questions, such as what my favourite parts are. This is like asking me what block of chocolate of the slab was my favourite. Dude, I love the whole slab!
Now Aife has not officially been introduced in the story that has been posted here on HIVE, but I could simply not help myself. I enjoyed meeting her and her personality is, well, awesome. I was also overly excited as she is the wife of a character I had first met (and loved) in @lex-zaiya's first published work Seeking a Prince.
Now I could go on and on, but, spoilers sweetie. So I will simply state that Aife is a Dekai. And if you want to know more about them, this post, Fell Dragon Races will give you information. Too lazy to click there? Well, physically, Dekai are grey to black-skinned, elf-like creatures, with bat-like wings. They usually keep their wings folded and close to their back. With most Dekai, the wings are vestigial and cannot be used to fly. There are some exceptions though Aife is one of them. Aife is from a warrior family which is why she is wearing armour. Her family or house colour is black.
If you want to read about her, then you had better go catch up on Fell Dragon. Aife has not made her debut there yet, so you have time to get up to date.
Fell Dragon Links
Fell Dragon Book 1: Start
Fell Dragon Races
Fell Dragon Book 2: Start
And without further gushing over @lex-zaiya's writing, let's get to the process of how I did this piece!
The Process
As always, I start with a rough sketch. Aife is a warrior and I took a lot of inspiration from Brienne of Tarth in terms of armour. Her hair is a little bit on the wild side so after some discussion with @lex-zaiya a faux-hawk was decided upon as the best hairstyle reference.
After the sketch, I got to work with the line art, cleaning everything up.
Then it was time to add the base colours. Grey skin, emerald green eyes, and midnight blue hair. In the fourth panel, you can see the combination of line art and base colours.
The next step was to start adding the shadows. I laughed hard as Aife looked a little bit like a goth panda after this step. You can also see I decided to alter some of the base colours at this point, specifically the undercoat of the armour.
Then I started adding in the highlights. Her armour being metal had harder highlights than for example her skin. I also added the pupils and the base lip colour.
Even more highlights in the hair in the next step. I also added a lot more detail to her eyes and lips to give them a bit more life. Some subtle pink blush helped to pull her skin together nicely. I began trying to figure out what I was going to do with the background.
In the last panel, I finally settled on the colour I was going to use for the background. I started touching up and deepening a lot of the shadows to add extra depth to the picture overall.
Some back glow and some border grunge, along with a lot of really tiny touch-ups, leaves us with the final piece. Queen Aife of the Dekai, who is currently contemplating if she should kick your butt.
Thanks
Thanks for stopping by and having a gander at my art! If you want to be added to my art tag list so you can get a notification of when I post art please let me know in the comments.
Special thanks to @lex-zaiya for her awesome writing which led to being inspired to do this piece.
Tag List:
@clairemobey @zakludick @jasperdick
