Drawn on: 12-29-09 | CER offered extra points for Christmas- or winter-related CER pics. I wanted to draw Fay Lan anyway, so um, I added snow... *cough* I would've drawn a wintier outfit, but I like her normal outfit so much! Oh, and those little red ribbons hanging down are helping tie her hair up. You can see that in the character sheet lineart, but they're black in the colored version 'cause I forgot to tell Arghs they were red. >.> Totally my bad.
I had that other totally different picture drawn by hand. It was meant to be colored, too. Then I colored the hair and realized... it looked way better without the lineart. So I got rid of it and went from there digitally, completely redrawing a different pose and keeping a very loose, sketchy sort of style throughout. Surprisingly enough, I actually like how it turned out. Her eyes, especially.
I left the skin white on purpose. The stark contrast between the white skin and nearly-black hair (not quite black, 'cause I colored it in gray for the original lineart, then after I erased the lineart I could only darken it so much without losing my highlighting) was part of what made the picture, I think.
Anyway, if you disregard the fact that most of the hair (I tweaked it afterward) was colored in with traditional lineart around it to create the shape, the whole thing was done digitally. One way or another, all that remains in this final image is digital.