Subject: Saya and Haji from the anime series "BLOOD+" currently airing in Japan. Yes, she's holding a sword in a scabbard.
Medium: Photoshop.
Time: Really freaking long. Let's just say I started on it back in 2005.

My other Blood+ Saya x Haji fanarts: [After a Thunderstorm] and [My Sin]

You can also find a close up, detailed, cropped view of just the faces here: [detailed view].

Update: I updated the image on 5/28/2006: made the tilt more pronounced, pumped up the foreground color, fixed up the flaps of his jacket, made his legs look less weird, add more highlights and sparkles, made the white parts of her dress more "glowy" looking, made her eyes redder. I'm a terribly fiddly artist--I've never been able to resist making more edits to my deviations after submission. -_-;;

Update: 8/30/2006 I upload a smaller version because I got some fanart stolen. So no more full view which is kind of a pity because I spend so much time on the details.

Update: Yet another edit on 3/20/2007 because I'm neurotic, apparently. The deficiencies in the piece were bugging the heck out of me so I tried my best to fix them. Also applied a better crop so more of the details show up.

Yet another edit on 6/7/2007! I'm incredibly critical of my own work. Drives me nuts.

Update: 11/25/2007 I CAN HAZ BLU ROZES NAO??!?!!

Crazy ramblings:
This is the first time I've attempted to do a true "hard cel" style--like the style of most anime pinups. Some people think it's an easier and faster style to do than a painting style........I still spent a bazillion hours on it anyway to make all the shapes look right because if anything is off, it just looks so much more obvious with this sort of style (There are probably better ways to do her shoulder blade but I'm not talented enough to think up of one) The really depressing thing is that since there are so many regions of flat color, it doesn't look like I spend much time on it. The original size is about 4000 pixels wide so I ended up doing a lot of detail work on the faces and hair which doesn't show up here at all. **sniff**

It was a giant pain to figure the right colors to use for a night time scene (well, actually twilight--that's what the title refers to). This was also the first time I attempted to depict a dim, moonlight scene. Originally I had wanted to put in blue rose petals drifting in the wind, but I thought it would look too cluttered and the picture is pretty darn blue as it is. Originally Saya's dress wasn't billowing in the wind but it looked too boring hanging like an old rag. It was heart breaking to have to toss aside so much hard work in order to fix that. I hated drawing the scalloped edge of the petticoat--it was hard making them even.

I tried to keep the characters very much on model for this fanart--a weak attempt to be nearly indistinguishable from the official art. Saya was pretty easy to draw but doing Hagi's face on model nearly gave me a migrane. He has such small, delicate features that if they're just a tiny tiny bit off, then he looks very un-pretty indeed. He's also suppose to look fairly young (21 years old since that's when....um...he went flower picking), but since he's got those smallish features, a lot of fan-artists wind up making him look 40 or something I wanted Saya's expression to be slightly bewildered and apprehensive since she still had no clue about herself at this point in the series. I wanted Hagi's expression to be the epitome of tender longing--the poor puppy has had it bad for her since he was a tender little thing XD. I was holding back a bit when I did my first BLOOD+ fanart [link] since I wasn't totally sure if SayaxHagi would be canon. Needless to say, I'm pleased at how things turned out although I'm still terribly pessimistic about how it might end. Only 20 more episodes to go! Don't die Hagi!