Handle With Care

I was in the mood for a small glasses idea, but was up for a slightly different approach with that, with someone in the midst of cleaning them. It doesn't feel often that glasses are treated with responsible care in a lot of media I see, and I wanted to mess with something in that line, see how it would look.

I went with a character from a show I saw and liked a good amount, Strike Witches, and thought Perrine H. Clostermann was a pretty neat character from it. The show has this alternate world in place where in the early 20th century, technology is a little more advanced and magic coincides with it. There are young girls who are recruited to fight against an alien force to prevent them from wrecking face on the human population. They also shoot guns and wear Striker Units which are basically jet legs that tap into their magic potential, and that's pretty cool.

The show has a cast that has a lot of fun characters to it that I may push to mess with more, despite some of their daring attire. But you know, they're cool, I'm bound to get past that one day. But for now, Perrine and glasses are going on. I had an image in mind of Perrine cleaning her glasses as a sort of freshening up stage before meeting with her commander, Mio Sakamoto. She may have a haughty attitude at times, but she's one to give her best to her friends and her higher-ups.

I had a small field in mind, but really wanted to have the sky be more of the focus for the background. I like the clouds around the sides and grassy field area, kind of less so with the top clouds. They feel a little too conflicting with one another, like I could have gone with one or the other, but I went with both. The grass blades, I like those as well, but can certainly refine those in future pieces. Also, man, Perrine has a fairly in-depth iris design, getting that down took longer than expected. But this was fun for a piece that started out as a super quick rough. I have a few more roughs that may meet a similar fate, many drafts are on the rise!