Throned Fairy Queen (with timelapse GIF)

While I am catching everyone up on the past five (really, five?) years since my last posts, let's not forget the present - it is the most important time after all. Here is one of my recent fantasy character paintings. It is based on a sketch for a character by a client I have been illustrating an entire sci/fantasy world for. It was meant for the main character, and was one of several sketches we really liked, but only wanted one final image, so I worked on this in my own time later.
These days I almost always create a 3D with DAZ Studio for the character and Blender for the lighting and scenery. They are typically not what I consider presentable so I am shy to show them off; they are wonky messes that give me just enough information to fill in the gaps when combined with photos. Photo reference would be better but is so much harder to come by it's often a hindrance to me, so 3D it is.

Without further ado, here's a time-lapse GIF showing some stages of the process: drawing (created over a messy colour sketch), colour work starting with the background, repaints of part like the headdress here, additional detailing, final pass for effects and sharpening. As you can glimpse, little is set in stone while I work, colours or hairdos can easily change if it turns out they don't work as anticipated.