Red Sonja Process

Here's some "process" breakdown for a piece I recently finished. It's the unlikely tale of how a random doodle gets inadvertently turned into a full-fledged picture, courtesy of a complete lack of foresight.

First, the finished image:

Finalized image.

It started from this little Photoshop doodle.

Fore!

 After looking at it, I thought she looked like she was golfing, so I changed it to give her a more active pose.

Pose, take two.

Two months later, I threw down some basic colors.

Oh, garish colors!

But after ignoring this upstart doodle for two months, I decided the pose was still not quite right. She looked like she was resting, and I decided I wanted her to be chopping down with the blade. Perhaps through the neck of a humongous snake?

Color block in.

 Next came some more work on the arms and an attempt to bring some of those initial colors under control.

Taming the color a bit.

After another 2 month hiatus, more color tweaking, in an effort to warm up her skin and get some color into the snake.

Warmer skin and more color? What the hell?

 Then I decided the colors were too bright. Again.

Normalizing the colors.

 Then I left the piece for another 9 months, distracted by other projects. When I came back to it, I made some big changes. I added more details to the armor and hair, added the gloves, changed the motion of her bikini bottom, etc.

Details and edits.

After a couple of months more, I came back to it and finished it up to its final state, as seen above. I used a lot of color overlays to bring consistency into the palette, and added details to the snake.