Warriors

... or the alternative title, according to is 'Seven Brides for Seven Beasties'

I've produced this for the latest contest for I wasn't sure I'd captured the mythological aspect enough and so I created a prison cell and threw some orcs, trolls, a cyclops and Hercules into the prison. OK, I was being silly when I added Hercules.

It was a struggle to get this finished. I've been finding it really hard to get back into my art after recent events. In light of how I'm feeling right now, please don't be too brutal with your criticism; I'm sure there are a lot of things I could have done better. This was a bit of a mega undertaking and I've been a total disaster tonight - I even managed to rip it twice as I removed it from my drawing board. It's all done in pencil and measures approx 15 1/2 x 22inches ... it was bigger, but a bit of detail was sacrificed when I trimmed it. I had to scan it in eight sections and piece it pack together in photoshop.

Here are the credits for the reference materials used. I need to add fuller details for the wolf and bear and hope I can do this soon. A lot of this drawing is also from my imagination btw :-
The two tigers were drawn using reference photos supplied by Links to each photo below
[link]
[link]
The credit for the wolf ref photo will be given later. I used a pic supplied by a friend for another work which I'll be doing in collaboration with her; but I don't have details of the stock supplier just yet.
The bear ref pic came from an Observer newspaper - I will give full details in due course. It was a head and shoulders shot and I've reversed the image and invented the rest of the body.
The bird, the snake and the lemur are all invented, as are the prisoners in the cell - no ref pics used there.
And now for the warrior maidens :-
L-R
This first maiden doesn't look much like the stock reference supplied by I've retained the pose, but made a few changes. [link]
The maiden with a snake is based on a stock photo supplied by I've made changes here too including different clothing, plus the invented arm holding the snake and the boot drawn from imagination.
[link]
I used a stock photo by as reference for this image [link]
The kneeling warrior maiden is based on a stock photo by I've made a few minor changes in my interpretation.
[link]
The warrior maiden seated on a throne is based on a stock photo which I'm very much indebted to as it also provide me with the inspiration for the background and it dictated the perspective of the rest of the drawing. The image was supplied by [link]
The next warrior maiden is based upon another image supplied by
[link]
The final warrior maiden is based on an image by I've added a hand and her skirt. I also reversed the image.
[link]

I hope that's everything