I will continue to refine my images for Gall, but in the meantime, I’m also working on Gall’s primary antagonist, Faline. I am always leery of attempting to render female characters for fantasy because I don’t want them to be lurid. Boris Vallejo has his fans, and I am not criticizing his work, but bikini models in nipple armor aren’t what I’m looking for. I want my females to stand equal to and, in some instances, superior to their male counterparts in ways that don’t depend on a dose of eroticism.

That said, using my prompt for Gall as a model going forward in Leonardo, I came up with the following prompt.

Create a pencil sketch of a 31-year-old European woman with shoulder-length blonde hair. She has distinctive eyebrows, green eyes with a slightly malevolent look, and a crooked smile that suggests cunning. She is dressed in a form-fitting gray tunic with long sleeves featuring intricate Celtic designs on the collar and sleeves. Over the tunic, she wears a light gray hooded cloak secured with a cloak pin shaped like a lidded eye. From her sword belt, a short ornate knife and several pouches hang. She also wears a thin necklace with a gold pentagram around her neck. The woman is positioned next to a table with a map spread out on it. She points to a specific location on the map with one hand while her other is balled up into a fist. The sketch should focus on capturing her detailed attire and the dynamic, intent expression as she interacts with the map, highlighting her calculated and somewhat menacing demeanor.

The resulting rendered image came out as follows:

As a first attempt, this wasn’t bad, but it sure left much of what I wanted out. The face and expression, however, are perfect, as they capture a bit of her ruthlessness and allure. She is a dangerous opponent. I will refine this further.

I took another stab (no pun intended) at this by using the Microsoft Designer image as the “description” of the image. I knew I wouldn’t get anything much like the above, but I was curious about what Leonardo would do. For a refresher, this is what Microsoft Designer produced:

I fed this into Leonardo, which derived a prompt that produced this output:

Much more refined and still black and white. I will play around with this approach a bit more, but I’m returning to my original prompt to get a full-standing shot like the above.