At this point, all of the important elements were in place and it was time to start blocking in some detail on the figure.

One of the things I like to do when working on a character based illustration is to concentrate on the face very early on in the creation process. Once I've worked that up to a high standard, it takes a lot of the pressure off and also sets a kind of benchmark that I can refer back to when detailing the rest of the image. For this image I wanted to portray beauty and warmth, but with the suggestion of a darker side.

Armed with a wide selection of reference photographs, I zoomed in and started sketching in the rough shape of her features, concentrating on the eyes at first, and then working downwards to her lips. I had to make several changes to get the eyes right, spending about an hour in total just getting the face to this level:

Once I was happy with the way her face was looking, I zoomed back out and blocked in the rest of her figure keeping things very loose and sketchy. I shortened the length of her thigh pads and added some lines to suggest a leafy design and texture which I then applied to other parts of her outfit. I then worked on the foreground area to her left and right using a few textured brushes, as well as hard brushes to suggest areas of vegetation. It was important not to get carried away with small details at this point, I was just trying to create shapes and lines that would read as plant life and add to the composition of the piece by leading the eye towards the figure in the centre.