I was watching Tony Robinson's Walking Through History the other day, and as he was in Pembrokshire he touched on the story of Nest ferch Rhys (c.1085–1136) who is commonly referred to as The Helen of Wales. I'd not heard of her before, and thought she had an interesting story, so used her as a topic for a sketch.
I had some fun researching beauty ideals of the 12th century, because I wanted to try drawing a more accurate medieval woman, rather than one influenced by our modern standards of appearance.
I used a number of sources, but here's a more amusing simple introduction. Since Nest was around at the turn of the 12th century, I didn't go with the later 'hairless' look, as braids were a common Norman hairstyle at that time – anyway, if seeing some hair was a bit on the steamy side, that's definitely appropriate for her!
I coloured it up for Colour Collective on Twitter. I like my sketch better, I think, but this isn't too bad:
The theme colour this week was Mustard Yellow, so I kept everything with a yellowish hue except her eyes, to make them stand out.
Sketch with a 0.5 Mechanical Pencil with #B Lead in a Moleskine Sketchbook
Colouring in Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 with a Wacom Intuos Pro 5
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