Fantasy Art - Swordmistress

If nothing else, blogging my art has made me concentrate more on completion.  It's like an informal deadline -- time without a blog post is like dead air on the radio.  And since I can't really post without drawing something, the time I spend with pencil and pad is more results oriented than it used to be.  I'm certainly not giving up my sketchbook, though.  That's where finished work begins, and where a lot of learning gets done.

The Uldairi tribes of the eastern lands are unique in that women wield the political power.  Even on the battlefield, the women are the equal of the men in defending their camps from bandits, raiders, and the many strange creatures that roam the empty lands.  The only exception is the highly ritualized warfare that takes place between different tribes.  These conflicts are the province of the Uldairi men alone, when they don grotesque masks and engage in a deadly game subject to rules and taboos that no outsider can truly understand.