"The strange face-talkers from the blue world liked me. They offered me money and fame. 'Your voice could bring any human to tears; you could have any lead role in any opera, you could be the biggest pop star our world has ever seen', they said. 'You could be the bridge between our worlds, binding them together with art!' Art? I've never looked at it that way, and neither have my people. According to them, my voice is too frivolous and annoying for greatness; it sounds like reverberating glass. My tail is deformed, they say, lacking the robust roundness and size of the tails of the great singers. That's fine. I've never aspired to sing, and I've never thought of myself as great. I've only ever done it for the love of it. To be seen as the greatest of singers by an alien race (especially one so strange as to sing from the same place they eat) is simply frightening. I wonder if I really could bring our worlds together with my ugly little voice. though. Maybe that ugly little voice isn't so ugly after all."
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CHOW 40: Space Singer.
The two main complaints about my last CHOW submission were depth and shading. I tried to redeem myself by working with both of those as strong parts of this one. I like the way the character looks, but I can't say the same about the hill she's on.
Time spent on this: About 10 hours, spread out over a few days.
Comments and critique are really appreciated; I always respond!

Viewing Full-Size is recommended. It's a big image.
I tried a bunch of stuff, but the quality gets raped some no matter how I upload the image.