Hell Girl Fanart: Ai Enma Study: Sakura Uta

Final version now up at [link] Please note how using a more realistic setting (background and foreground) necessitated a more realistic and less kawaii Ai.

Kaimei weasel hair brush pen and ink on 12x18 sketch paper. Coloring in photoshop (in progress)

In episode 25 of Hell Girl (Jigoku Shoujo), Sentarou has been protecting the young girl Ai from being sacrificed to the Mountain God by their village. When they are discovered, Ai and her parents are bound and thrown into a pit to be buried alive and Sentarou forced to cover them with the first shovelful of dirt. Sentarou decides to run away from the village, but as night falls, he turns back to see flames in the distance. He returns to see the resurrected Ai, now Ai Enma, walking through the burning houses in her funeral robes, singing the Sakura Uta. It is an eerie moment.

The show includes very long shots of Ai, or closeups (there is a closeup pan up her body), but no midrange head-to-toe shots of Ai, so I put one together from the frames of the pan. Ai's head to body ratio seems to be around 1/8--a bit long for a 12-15 year old girl--so I've brought that down to around 1/7, still a bit long, but I'm assuming that she's been temporarily turned into a goddess of death.

She also smiles creepily, but while that's good in context, I want viewers to recognize her from just glancing at the artwork, so I've replaced her smile with her more characteristic emotionless gaze. This pose will be digitally composited with a burning village scene I will do in pastels. The original anime had no burning bodies, but I think I will add a couple for added interest--possibly a burning skull in the foreground?

I'm finding that paper with a tooth seems to hold brushwork better than smooth paper. Has anyone else noticed this?