This one was truly a struggle -- I aimed perhaps a bit too high for someone relatively new to painting, but even the compromised version I ended up with is still pretty cool. The original plan was to paint the entire piece, including the Countess, in a pseudo-Baroque style, mimicking the harsh lighting and palette of a Caravaggio. I sketched an idea from my imagination, but I wanted the lighting to be very convincing and accurate...so I built out the entire scene in Blender from scratch (other than the female model, which was a free download). Then I attempted to render it in a painterly style, but was very unsatisfied with the results. In the end, I redrew the figure entirely in a cel-shaded style but kept the painterly background. I think the effect is cool, even if it wasn't the vision I had at the beginning. I included the concept sketch, the 3D render, and my final version of the painted figure as sort of bonuses here.
I think I need to level up my skills more before I attempt something with more complicated lighting like this again...but I'll keep doing my best!
ALT TEXT
A cel-shaded anime-style drawing of my original character, the Countess, on a painted background. She appears to be a thin but curvy woman with greyish hair tied back in a bun, inverted nipples and a thick tangle of bush. She stands in the nude with her arms behind her back, illuminated from the shoulders down by strong sunlight coming in at a slant, her face in reddish shadow. Her expression is flat, her eyes dark and piercing, but there's the slightest hint of a smirk on her lips. Tiny beads of red light burn in her black pupils. Behind her are rows of pillars cut by a deep shadow and a placid ankle-deep pool of blood being fed by a large aqueduct near the ceiling that glows with an eerie red light.
The censored version has beams of light painted over her breasts and pubes.