In between doing what I’m supposed to be doing and what I’m really supposed to be doing, I whipped this fanart up—gee when was the last time I did fanart on a novel? :P OK, I have incentive, because I really, really, really, really, really, really want to win the manga preview of Gail Carriger’s novel, Soulless. It’s not even the full-fledged novel, BUT I WANTS IT.

What I love apart from the tea parties, the dandiness and the campy absurdity of it all, is Alexia’s awesome parasol/s. I haven’t read the novels in a long time, though am currently starting Blameless, so I couldn’t remember what it looked like—or on that note, what her dresses were like—so I simply fashioned my own.

This took quite a long time (I didn’t keep track) but boy I had fun in Photoshop.  I took a much more Impressionistic approach than previous artwork. I went rather ker-razy with it all, which kind of fits, I suppose.

I modelled Alexia after Édouard Manet’s Woman with a Parasol (1881) and attempted—keyword attempted—to implement the very characteristic Italian face.