High Wire Thief

Oh, where to begin? This is my contest entry for Saphamia's recent contest. Unfortunately, it's a far cry from what it should have been... My poor planning to thank for that. Always need a plan B... As I write this, I feel as though I have murdered someone... And in a sense, I probably have. I murdered Saphamia's beautiful efforts to create a lovable and charming character by subjecting them to the following:

a) My own shortcomings as an artist.
b) A scanner that seems to love to bleach the crap out of images.
c) Editing via MS Paint.

Oh, Saphamia... Please forgive me. I'd had such high hopes for this endeavor... The sketch is simpler than my usual pencil works as well. That's because I was only trying to get a decent enough base to work off of when I went to color. Unresolved details I would have resolved then. Obviously, that plan fell through.

On to happier things. The character I chose for this, if you cannot tell, is Marina. In an effort to prove her own thieving skills to her mother, she attempts to swipe the wallet of a seemingly no-good, grumpy sort of fellow. Turns out, she swiped the wallet of the Dragon Knight, Damshe Ralke. Since her skills as a thief are not quite on par with her mother's, she is caught quite red-handed but manages to evade the furious Damshe and give him a fairly good chase across some rooftops. However, she soon comes to a street that is bridged only by a clothesline. Much to her own amazement, she actually seems to have a slight knack for tightrope walking. Damshe, knowing that he does not but being too angry to let her get away, attempts to follow with less than spectacular results. And what he just now seems to realize is that the line will not hold the weight of them both. In the end, Damshe does manage to catch up to Marina. However, he is quite merciful once he finds out her motives and allows her to go ahead and take the wallet as a sort of trophy to prove that she had, in fact, perturbed the Dragon Knight. Hopefully, Sapphire will be impressed by Marina's hard fought victory.

Once again, Saphamia, I am very sorry for the less than stellar look of this one. I'll see if I can find the proper methods of finishing it up proper-like sometime. Although, I must say that, despite the painfully lousy background and depiction of Damshe himself, drawing Marina was an interesting and fun little challenge. I really did put the most effort into her for this drawing. Although, the lack of color does tarnish that effort greatly. Hopefully, I'll be able to do her character justice someday.