((Please view in High Resolution, the picture shows up clearer))
- "Kairah Solan" belongs to Water Nymph.

yep, entry for Water Nymph's "Out of My Mind - OC Challenge" contest.
I found their Eastern inspired design different and refreshing amongst the usual OC themes, so I decided to take a stab at it myself.

I was going to make her outfit in reds or oranges, since the first two entrants already did purples or blues, but perhaps I stumbled upon a reason for that, I realized that oranges and similar colors blended too much with her dark skin, and particularly in this picture, it would have been more difficult to make her stand out from the environment, so I put her in violets and added yellows and oranges around her to set her off.

Why is there a Cheetah with her?? well, when I read the descriptions for her two main outfits, it sounded like they had a fair amount of embellishment to them and made me perceive the character as perhaps being of a more well-to-do social standing, so I took that perception and used it. The Cheetah became like a symbol of that perception, I could have made it another type of cat, but Cheetahs are more plausible in my often overly-realistic head since at least in our world, they were in fact tamed and used on hunts.

came out okay, it may not be a contest winner, but it could be worse, in fact it was, this is actually the second version I made of this picture, the first one was a lost cause after I tried to color it, the paper was too rough and the left over sketch lines showed up like crazy under the pencil, so I had to trace it and do it over. it was worth it, and if nothing else this picture made me rediscover how nice printer paper is to color on! XD

anyways, I'm rambling...again, technical stuff -

Medium: traditional - fine point pen lineart, and colored with Prismacolor and Derwent colored pencils
Original Size: 8.5"x11" printer paper
Approx. Invested Time: No idea, but rough estimate would be around 8 to 10 hours all together, start to finish.