The Phantom Inker

This is Elena. She was once human, but there was an incident awhile back with a witch, and she's been like this ever since.

Alternatively, this is the end result of my wife begging me for the better part of the last three years to draw more nagas. I drew the lineart, and my wife, Songbird, chose her colors and patterns, and I then did the coloring and shading based on Songbird's ideas. I wasn't that sold on the look of a banded rock rattlesnake originally, much less in blue, but it really grew on me as I did the shading. Elena came out very complimentary. As usual, my wife has good taste ;)

And, as usual, this is 100% vector art in CorelDRAW, done entirely with a mouse. I'd guess about 25 hours total, although I don't really know for sure. The original lineart was about 5-6 hours tops — I did it really fast — but color and shading with this much detail takes a lot of time. I have some new tools in CorelDRAW, custom macros that I wrote over the last few weeks that really speed up my process by automating some of my drawing actions, and that's done a good job of shaving my time down somewhat from what it used to be.

This is arguably my best picture to date, in my opinion.

Prints are available at deviantART. Buy one! She'd look good on your wall!