Beauties & Beasts: Treasure Chest (pencils) (Patreon)

     Whew. This one took awhile. It started with the note "pirate attacked by tentacles" scribbled in a corner of a sketchbook--simple enough to jot down, but a bit more complicated and time-consuming to realize. First there was arriving at the right pose for the pirate (originally her legs were wrapped together by a tentacle, but that made her look weak and passive, rather than aggressive and heroic), then there were the tentacles to compose and make sure none of them had contradictory overlaps (I recently saw a book cover illustration in which a tree limb in the foreground is overlapped by a tree limb from the background, and it just bugged me to no end, mostly because it's the kind of mistake I would make and not notice until it was too late); then I decided I didn't want just regular, octopus-type tentacles, so I played around with details, ultimately arriving at the dark, shell-like plates, bony spines and the nasty-looking pincers arranged around the whole. There were supposed to be translucent filaments--the digestive organs-- waving at the bottom of the tentacles, but I never would have finished in time to post if I'd included them. Such is the reality of DEADLINES, the ultimate enemy of artists everywhere (even greater than loneliness and hemorrhoids). I almost had to have my wife model the boobs, because for some reason I was having trouble getting the realistic "squishiness" I wanted at this angle (I can't stand fake-looking boobs; big or small, I don't care, but they need to look natural), but I finally got it. I even researched the way female pirates historically dressed...then I drew her like this anyway.