Some info:

I had a few specific desires for this piece:

• b&w, with some noire themes
• I wanted to design the dress
• I wanted her hip to be exposed
• I wanted a unique hand interaction, specifically, I wanted the fingers intertwined a certain way (more on this later)
• I wanted her to be tall and slender

During the sketch my wants start to conflict with one another so I chose the higher priority thing: the design of the dress over her fingers being intertwined. So I course-corrected and changed a few things. I think the order went:

1. Basic initial pose
2. Rough dress design
3. Hairstyle + jewelry
4. Corrected pose + wineglass
5. Boa/scarf/gloves -- The glove design actually changed, I had them being these kinda weird poofy sleeves funneling down to the wrist, you can sort of see that remnant in my sketch, I wasn't vibing off this design it felt too excessive for the way I imagine the character

Then I got to paintin'.

Total time was about 10-11 hrs. Longer than I'd have liked but I wasn't in any rush. I wanted to keep the piece pretty low in the values, but I think could've afforded to lift the values more. I want to play around with more stuff like this, I actually very much enjoyed working on this.

sketch:

WIP (flipped cuz thats just how i screenshot it kek):