Annie asked for a picture of her Castle Marrach character, Illiana, based on Connie Nielsen in the movie Gladiator:

Illiana’s one of the most illustrious PCs in Castle Marrach history — the first, in fact, to be promoted to the nobility, so I suppose this should be properly titled, “Lady Illiana.” She had a few other notable firsts, including the first marriage and being the first real victim of the Owls. I always admired how Annie used that experience to shape her character; instead of letting it lie as some traumatic incident in the past (good for a few tearful performances, but otherwise forgotten) it informed all her choices and led her to make some dark and difficult choices about how Illiana would live her life in the castle. None of my characters had a lot of direct interaction with Illiana, though, until not long before I left the game when we contrived an excuse for she and Helene to work together on a bit of mischief. That plot and the fabulous RP it encompassed is still one of my fondest Castle Marrach memories, and if there was any promise at recapturing that experience I’d go back in a second.

Well, maybe.

As for the picture: The features are okay, but I’ve failed to catch the sharp planes of the actress’ face, so she ends up looking very broad-faced (when in fact the dimensions are very close to the original photo) and not archly elegant and refined. This is a problem with this line-art style of drawing that I need to figure out how to compensate for; shading would have made a big difference. I have some ideas, and I might go back and work on this some more later to try them out.

And let’s not talk about the ear, okay?

For some reason, the content filter here at work has decided to block the image file, so if it doesn’t show up please let me know!