Character Design

My next BIG project will be a book that seems to have been 'in the works' for a looong time now.
It's called ( at the moment ) 'KNIVES OF GLORY' and it's an adventure comic about food.
I've recently started working on more character designs, in this case the female lead.
Her name is Lucie and she's French. We all wanted her to be one of those casually fabulous frenchwomen who seem to take no time over their appearance, but nevertheless looks utterly together and sophisticated. While I'm very aware that this is a little bit of a cliche....I don't care. Sometimes you just need to embrace that stuff.
Anyway, the first drawing was directly based on the photograph of a french model that the writer found.Now if this was a Nikolai Dante story then I'd be done right here. However I'm trying to go for a more loose and energetic style for this story and I need her to have a certain aloofness , at least at the start of the story. So here's version 2...Maybe a little too old and vampish loooking. Though I quite like the Jane Birkin-ish thing that's starting to creep in ( yes I know that Birkin is English )
Ok NOW we're cookin' ! I'm fairly happy with that, in terms of the characterisation and the line quality.

I might post some more of the prep work for this story as it moves forwards. Hopefully it will be quite different from anything else I've done.
Thanks for your attention.

Oh and why are you reading this and not being at HiEx in Inverness this weekend? Hmmm? That's where all the cool cats are...oh yea!