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This is my anime version of Mara Jade from the Star Wars novels. This picture incorporated little things from the American comics that Mara appeared in combined with my own drawing style. The most obvious of these is her outfit. It's based off one she wore in the series 'By the Emperor's Hand.' The other is her eyes which I based off the version done by the artist who did the comic version of the Zahn Trilogy. Everything else is sort of how I pictured her in my mind's eye.

This is the first picture that I made up an original pose for without using a reference picture. I think it turned out pretty good. Not perfect... but I still like it.

Due to the original version not being perfect in my eyes I have decided to go back and fix some of the things that I didn’t like, while keeping other aspects. For starters I never was really satisfied with the background I did, so I’ll be getting rid of that. I’ve recently got a copy of the comic ‘By the Emperor’s Hand’ and now have TONS of reference pictures for her outfit and realized that what I thought was the bottom of a long coat in the picture I found on the net, was actually just a shadow, so that will be changed as well.

One of the things that I never liked was the gun. I wanted her to be holding a small gun (Like the one she keeps in her arm holster.), but couldn't find any reference pictures for it. The one I came up with looks like something that should be in my husband's collection, not the Star Wars universe..... since I have better references now I think I’ll give her a new one.	.. Original with digital background
This is the original colored ink drawing. It was drawn from 8/3/01 to 1/30/02 ((I'm a pretty slow drawer ^_~)) and colored on 2/13/02. It was inked with Millennium pens and colored entirely using colored pencils. The glowing saber and background seen in the previous finished version were added digitally.	New scan of the original
In this version only minor changes were made, but I feel they make the picture A LOT better. First I gave her a wider waistline. I also widened her arms and legs a bit. I could have just edited the previous version instead of going back and rescanning my original drawing, but unfortunately I lost just about all the original high res files of a lot of my artwork due to a CD going bad and not having a backup..... Lesson learned.... ALWAYS KEEP BACKUP COPIES!!!!
The next step, seen at the top of this page was done in Jan 2006. After I had finished resizing the various body parts in PhotoPaint, I loaded the file into Photoshop for some digital painting. I completely recolored her hair. I then redrew her jaw line, lips, & nose. I then digitally painted her entire face. I think it is a big improvement over the original version.	Original version of her face.