Fire and Ice

So I've also been working on a piece for Fire and Ice, a convention that happens every Feb. I looked at past art for the conventions and saw a lot of it was fire vs ice kind of thing, and while there is normally a theme this year it's open to interpretation. I wanted to do something a bit more balanced, and maybe unexpected, combing fire and ice together in one. Here I started a lose sketch of a figure, taking into consideration certain elements in the composition. 

Movement is very important to me in a piece, so it is usually the main focus as here. The little arrows I drew in are lead lines for which way the wind will be kicking up. Yep, even that is an important part. 

So here I've used sepia to start blocking in more of the figure and then going in with the eraser and bringing back my lights. It's working opposite of how I am used to in the comp since in traditional watercolor we paint from light to dark. But, since I have some issues getting contrast, I find this is a much needed step. 

Here I've also taken some consideration into her clothing. In my head I know what she is going to wear, even though it's not flushed out yet. I also made the skull and tusks of the walrus pike longer and bigger to help lead the eye in and around the piece. 

Here I threw a little bit of color into the image to see what it's going to look like as a pallet. This is very basic, and I want to keep to an earthy palette and allow the warm and cool colors to do their thing. 

A thought came to me looking at the end of this step that I could probably continue to digitally render this  piece with the ease it is coming along at, since I still have a personal piece I want to paint in. But it's still early...