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.

Now it was time to zoom back in and add more definition to her face. This was the stage that was going to either make or break the illustration, and so required the most time. The first thing I did was to add some depth to her eyes and nose, which were looking a little flat at this point. I placed my main light source overhead in order to create dark areas around her eyes, so it was important to get the shading right without making it look like she has bags under her eyes.

After spending an hour refining her face, it was time to make my way downwards and paint in the rest of her body. Sticking close to my reference and continuing to colour pick from that original photograph, I used a few simple, soft round brushes to detail her skin, keeping in mind where my light source was and how saturated the shadows should be. I made a major change to the shoulder pad at this stage as I felt the shape was too angular and didn't compliment the rest of the figure. Instead I went for a more rounded design, which I've since realised looks like a ‘Koopa’ shell from Mario Bros! I chose not to use any reference for her neckwear, preferring to design it as I went along going for an organic look. I did the same for the decoration around her naval. I added some greener tones to her skin from the chest down as I wanted to give the impression that there are bright plants and flowers just out of shot that are reflecting the main light back up onto her body, mainly to help intergrate her with the environment because we can't see her feet. By now the figure was nearing the final stages.

With only a few areas left to work on now, I started with the hair, adding more detailed strands and generally cleaning up my earlier block in. I used the colour dodge tool to create a strong highlight on the right side of her head which continues down to her hip, again to integrate her into the environment, avoiding the 'pasted in' look. I also went in and smoothed out her face, added eyelashes and adjusted the lighting on her lips to give more of a matte finish.