I am very proud of this piece. I finally made a good reference image for Kaede, and her Inugami looks great to me - I'm very happy with how her body's form came out.

Kaede wears strips of a ceremonial kimono robe. She was a demoness at one point, travelling with her Inugami (the demon wolf), but seeing the suffering of humans broke her heart, and she set out to help humans instead of harm them. The gem on her Inugami's forehead is where demon souls are captured, and her weapon is a staff with shinto prayer slips on them. Also, her upper chest is husky looking for a reason - she has a large chest cavity for running long distances and breathing deep.

Her sister, Leiko, has an orb on the back of her head, and a rope. The rope is for killing humans, the orb contains their souls. Leiko is chaotic neutral - she isn't good or evil, but struggles to maintain a 'balance'. Kaede is disrupting that balance by ridding villages of demons. Leiko is hunting Kaede down to kill her, so the balance can be restored and all the demons Kaede has contained will be released.

This image took about an hour and a half, pencil on bristol, tinted in OC3.

Kaede (c)

I know the hand looks bad, I'll be practicing them on my sketch blog.