Lightning is the main character of the Final Fantasy 13 console game. She is a strong woman, she fights with a gunblade. I really enjoyed in the game the beautiful blue sky in the backgrounds. It was so pretty that as soon as I started thinking about this painting the first thing that came up was: I want a pretty blue sky as the background.
I have enjoyed working on this artwork. Her gunblade is cool, she has a good outfit and she also has so smooth lips. (I have been surprised when I was looking at reference pictures of her, her lips are very nice and soft.)
As for how I have made this artwork, I started with a clean linerart. There are many small details that I had to look out for, so a lineart was quite necessary for this painting. Her gunblade is quite complex, to draw it you must understand how it works as well.
After I have made the lineart I put down the main colors making sure to get sharp edges. Once that was done I went to shading and finally to detailing. The detail work took the most time, I went back to many times to clean up the linework.
I have added the clouds almost at the end of the painting when the weather here – where I live – was something similar. I liked the clouds outside and got inspired to paint them. When the background was finished I have made some touch ups here and there before I said it is finished.
I hope you like this painting of her, I rarely do fan arts.