The Sorceress of the Woods protects the forest, the wildlife, and the balance between magic and the natural law. She is mysterious and powerful, wielding a mystical staff that grants her many abilities. This illustration features many tropes of the Fantasy genre. Allow me to break down the step by step process I took to render her.

The Wire Frame

To make her pose a little more interesting, it is important to keep in mind the angles her body makes. For instance, although her head is relatively straight, her shoulders are tilted and her waist is likewise angled, but in the opposite direction. I also drew the horizon and the perspective grid to use for drawing the background.

The Sketch

When filling in the details, the background became so dense with trees and foliage that the illusion of distance is (mostly) lost. Still, there are basically three tiers of position: the foreground, middle, and background. She and the tree on the left on in front, followed by a few more trees in the mid-level, and lastly everything else is behind. I went back and forth regarding whether or not to show her full face, but decided against it.

The Line Art

Every wizard or witch needs a good cloak to make them appear semi-concealed and therefore more mysterious. Under the robe I gave her a somewhat steam-punk aesthetic because that's a personal favorite style of apparel for me to draw. I'm a sucker for belts, buckles, and unnecessary gadgets.

The Flat Colors

To make her staff more than a mere walking stick, I drew some swirly designs. It was important to make these lines colored so set them apart and appear to be magical in nature, the source of her power. When coloring the trees, they were far too green and there was very little variation, making it look very flat. In the final version, I would add more red and an overall warm tone to the entire illustration.

The Finished Illustration

I drew this in Clip Studio Paint, which had a really cool feature that will automatically fill in color to a line art drawing. Although I already had my colors, I used this feature and combined the two to create such a vivid and varied color scheme to the image, especially the trees. I also used the watercolor brush for a lot of the shadows and finally put a dazzling glowing orbs effect using images on new layers set to screen mode.

Poster prints featuring this drawing are available on my website. I'm glad I was able to finally finish it and put it behind me, freeing me up for my next great piece of artwork!