Art Trade- Li Ling

Detou asked me to do an art trade with her recently. She wanted me to draw her character, Li Ling, in exchange for her doing some artwork of my hellhound, Arvex. Here's what I came up with. This was a tricky one. I actually ended up starting over halfway through because my original idea just wasn't working. Usually, when I start over on an artwork, it's all the way back at the sketch stage, but here I actually got up to flat colors before deciding that I didn't like how it was turning out. So I threw out my original idea and went with this instead. I think what really threw me with this character were the lips, those were really tricky to get right. But it was good practice, in the end.

If anyone's curious, I can upload my first attempt with this character to my scraps, so everyone can see how that went.

Update! Here's Detou's half of our art trade: remanlongtail.deviantart.com/a…

Li Ling (c) Detou
Artwork by remanlongtail