The Imperial Astrologer

I decided to participate in Aria's Ink ([link]) Sekrit Stalker contest for 2007 and wanted to do something very personal and nice for my giftee for my final gift. Since the site revolves around Sailor Moon fanfiction, short of writing some sort of drabble (which you never know if they'll like), I opted to do a fanart of the title character!

Originally, I was hoping to enter it in Seventh Sanctum's ([link]) latest contest, involving a new generator where the result was "Imperial Astrologer." For some reason, the name made me think of a piece of official Sailor Moon manga art, featuring Sailor Saturn with her Silence Glaive, with a background with a planetary chart, a sun, and stars on it.

I replicated Saturn's pose in this, which started out as pencil art, all done by hand-- I didn't trace a thing; I just had the original artbook standing nearby as reference. Though I didn't end up being able to enter the Seventh Sanctum art contest with it, I loved the idea so much that I inked and colored the original-- but it didn't end up how I wanted. So I took the pencil original (which I smartly saved in a digital format before inking it) and INKED AND COLORED the whole damn thing in Photoshop. It took forever, but I loved the final result, even if it didn't look as much like the Saturn-styled one I based it off of.

Also, my giftee at Aria's Ink LOVED it, so "Mission Accomplished." I really like how this turned out, especially compared to some of my old (hideously ugly, you'll never see it here) Sailor Moon art.