AlphaBooks A - Aravis Tarkheena

Monday marked the start of AlphaBooks, the new weekly challenge by Ben Towle, Andrew Neal & Rich Barrett.

"AlphaBooks is the name of the game. We will be drawing ficitonal characters from books every week - one for each letter of the alphabet. On the first day (Monday, May 21), everyone will draw characters whose names start with the letter “A.”  The following monday, we’ll draw characters whose names start with the letter “B.” And so on!"

Continuing in the flavor of my AlphaBeast series of detailed black & white sketches with an element of story and/or background, I originally thought I would choose all (or mostly) animal characters from books… because, well… that's my thing. And although Aslan was on my list of ideas, I had accidentally looked at the AlphaBooks page and saw he had already been claimed… more the once. So I went for a lesser known, but still a strong character from the Chronicles of Narnia, Aravis from The Horse and His Boy. An exempt from Wiki:

Aravis is a young Tarkheena, a female member of the ruling nobility of Calormen. With her horse, Hwin, who is revealed to be a talking beast from the land of Narnia, she flees from her home, in her brother's armor, in order to escape an arranged marriage. Aravis is a strong character, whose confidence, bravery and loyalty are offset by arrogance and self-centeredness. She is also an amazing storyteller.

It's been years since I read the book, but it's one of my Narnian favorites. I knew I wanted to do more than just a 'portrait', but not necessarily a 'scene' from the book. After looking up visual references (below) to get the ideas for her overall dress going, I just started doodling and eventually found a pose/situation that suggested a more than a mere portrait would.

Rough Sketches, looking for ideas… "hit it" over on the right.

Original unedited scan, col-erase pencil

References include various web & movies!

Any excuse to watch a movie, I tell you. ;)

So, what do you think of my Aravis? Does she look like her description?