Mother of Dragons

I've been meaning to try and paint celebrity portraits for a while now and I thought I'd start by painting a character from one of my favourite TV shows, Game of Thrones: Daenerys Targaryen.

This was an exercise to test myself and to learn from and I'm hoping to do more. I used a screen capture from one of the episodes for reference but found it somewhat challenging to paint because the original image was a little soft and the core shadows were much darker due to a sunset in the background. Although I did paint a rough version of the background, I decided to scrap it because I thought it was too scenic for the composition I was going for. In fact, I agonized over several different backgrounds (the paradox of choice) before committing to this final one thanks to several friends whose opinions I sought.