The Swamp

This was done as a sample image of some more mainstream fantasy. Of course, I couldn't settle for some boring heroic fantasy female posing pretty. So I dropped her in the worst hiding place I could think of and beat the ever-living crap out of her.

Hilariously, a few people have commented negatively about the scalemail bikini. My normal costuming might be off for the industry but at least my fans prefer it! ;)


Since I am clothed properly in this particular image, I wanted to share how I work with references. I take photos of myself with approximate lighting, costuming, and props to use as a base reference. You can get decent refs with very little investment or fancy equipment. I use a cheap Canon Powershot camera with a self timer. My "sword" is a stretcher strip. Be resourceful.



Then I supplement outside references to fill in the blanks and get any changes or details I can't have in my own photos. In this case, I used outside reference for her arm muscles and the sword. The rest that doesn't match up with my initial reference shots--her clothing, face, and torso--were all done from head. A year ago I would have struggled with her torso especially, but my anatomy studies must be paying off. If the torso were more visible I would have dug up some extra refs, but I didn't feel it was necessary. This is another lesson I am slowly learning... sometimes one doesn't need to render everything so precisely to have it "read" well.