So I had JUST gotten the picture of Ali and Butterscotch having coffee posted...when I was told that Korat's character Ali is my Chosen One for this month's Equine Exchange.

LOL my brains, they went "BUT I JUST DID THAT! O.O"

I wanted to do something totally different, and I had five different ideas for Really Cool Concepts...things like Ali on a bike, in a Starbucks drive-thru, looking all unhappy because they won't accept a bike as a car in a car drive-thru (the title would have been "what do you mean this isn't an acceptable vehicle?!"), and I even toyed with a follow-up or sequel picture to the previous Ali-and-Butterscotch picture, wherein Ali had a Starbucks coffee and Butterscotch had one from Tim Horton's (the title: "Coffeewar") but...alas, none seemed to be working out. I ended up hating every single sketch...and finally with the deadline looming, I opted for a similar pose to the first one, which made me feel guilty, like it is a cheap cop-out...so I decided to do it in a totally different medium. :)

At first I wanted her to be resting on the steps to the art museum in Chicago...but then I got lazy, didn't look up refs (this is solely based on my memory from when I lived there many years ago) and didn't feel like doing Michigan street in the background, so...there's Ali, leaning on a stone lion. :P

It wasn't until I went to post this that my brain remembered something: Lions and Unicorns. History, THEY HAZ IT. No really, see for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Li.....nd_the_Unicorn

Blergh.

So anyways...I once again had to have major help from Torakhan on the anatomy here, I admit it: I suck at drawing breasts, truth. Plus her hips/belly were really "off" and he fixed that for me as well.

I know there's some errors, I haven't done much in just pencils in a long time. :P I added some white colored pencil for highlights, too. :)

Here's the tl;dr version: Hope you like it, Korat!