Wolf in the Water

Please full view! It looks a lot better when it's larger.

March 20th, 2013: Updated the background! I simplified a bunch of stuff and cleaned up a lot of stuff. It should look a bit better now.

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Finally finished! This was one of the oldest things on my to-do list and I'm so happy that it's finally done.

Anyway, this is my #fantasy-xchange picture from last October. I was assigned to draw ~lablue's awesome werewolf girl, Maha. I tried to finish it way back in October, but none of my ideas were working out. I had to approach it in a completely different way to find something that I liked.

If you're wondering about the background, Lablue asked for a mid-19th century eastern fantasy setting. Now, I'm not super familiar with eastern fantasy so I threw her in a swamp. Why? Well, swamps are always super creepy, right? There are dangerous animals living in them (snakes, alligators, etc.), the water is muddy, they generally smell like death, and just have a super creepy look/coloration to them. Man, I really don't like swamps. :C I threw some lily-pads and koi fish in at the bottom to tie in with her fish scale armband and maybe help sell the "eastern fantasy" bit a bit more.

I also threw in some shape-shifting elements for once. I've always thought that shape-shifting and werewolves are cool, but most of the pictures which are early on in the transformation have just been kind of weird and awkward. :/ I wanted to do something that looked badass without having to add *too* many wolf-like elements (wolves are always badass, so it's easy to make them look cool). Not sure if I accomplished that 100%, but at least I ~*tried*~.

Hope you like it!

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ART INFO
Art © 2013 by ~aboveClouds
Maha belongs to ~lablue
Thanks to *HanMonster, ~DimeSpin, *Shadow-Wolf and everyone else who gave me helpful feedback and critiques while I was working on this. You guys really helped to keep me motivated!

Critiques are always accepted!

Medium: Sketched traditionally, painted using PSE.