New Illustration: Five-Tailed Fox

I was approached awhile ago by my good friend and fellow illustrator Andrea Taylor about doing an art swap: a piece of artwork for a piece of artwork. Her request was for an illustration of a five-tailed fox, a creature from Japanese myth and her own avatar out here on the interwebs.

I managed to finish it up in between projects and have posted the final project below. I had a lot of fun with this one- pursuing another narrative illustration as oppose to my editorial work. I decided to show the fox in disguise as an orian (essentially a call girl from Edo period Japan) seducing then drugging a russian soldier in order to grab his blunderbuss. I thought this worked great as an example of the five-tailed fox's noted trickery.

Here are some rough sketches and color studies. Enjoy!