Colour Collective: Aubergine

The Colour Collective prompt this week was 'Aubergine' - it's a fabulous colour, and I didn't want to miss out, but I'd been keeping myself pretty busy all week, and the time I'd planned for Colour Collective ended up being spent rescuing a client piece where the parameters suddenly (and rather drastically) changed (thank heavens for Photoshop, what would I do without it?)... and in the end I had about 75 minutes in which to whip up a piece....

So I flicked through my current sketchbook, looking for anything that might conceivably work with aubergine, passed a few medieval ladies, and settled on this rough sketch that I had done one night when I couldn't sleep. I'd grabbed a random book (Heyer's Beauvallet) and used that as a prompt, because the idea was to sketch until I was sleepy, not to use my brain in thinking of something to sketch. 

Beauvallet is a very early Heyer book, so heavy on the Description and the Drama and the Derring Do:

Backed against the wall, with hands laid along the panelling to either side of her stood a lady, a lady all cream and rose and ebony. Cream her skin, and rose her lips, ebony the lustrous hair confined under a net of gold. Her eyes were dark and large under languorous lids, the brows delicately marked, the nose short and proud, the full lips curved and ripe. She wore a gown of purple camlet, worked cunningly with a pattern of gold thread, with a kirtle of armazine to fall from the veriest hint of a farthingale. Behind her head reared up a high ruff of lace sewn with crystals. It framed a face piquant and lovely. The square of her bodice was cut low across her breast; a jewel lay upon the white skin, rising and falling with her quickened breath. 

I do not habitually draw Elizabethan costume, and the sketch was done while I was in bed, and not about to do any research, so ... yeah, ignore the blatant inaccuracies. I might see if I can turn this into something (much) better for my portfolio, as I like the basic pose and sense of drama and if I change most of it it could probably work for a kidlit cover... 

Adobe Photoshop CC2015 with a Wacom Cintiq Companion 2. About an hour and a half, including the sketch