Painting Princess Ida, part 2

This is a tightened-up version of my initial pencil sketch for Gilbert & Sullivan’s Princess Ida in a previous post. Like many G&S operettas, Ida has a lot of battle-of-the sexes humor – as a matter of fact, there’s literally a battle of the sexes in Act 2, which is why I’m picturing Ida with her cuirass and longsword. Next step is to transfer it to the illustration board and work up a color sketch, which I’ll be posting very soon.