Sayyina - my first OC?

There's a question mark at the end of the title because I'm not sure myself.

Sometimes I get my own chronology confused about which character I created first. looking back over my old artwork and sketchbooks isn't always helpful, because I was notoriously delinquent about putting dates on my works back in the day.

But I think this is my actual first creation, because of when she came about. My wife and I were working at Busch Gardens Tampa ("The Dark Continent", as it was known at the time; it retains its Africa-themed attractions but dropped that name some years ago) in the early 1980s. At the time, one of the entertainment offerings was a troupe of belly dancers; and since the Rubio Artists office shared a trailer with the dressing room of the dancers, I came to be acquainted with some them. And–as you can see by the illustration above–I was inspired to create a belly-dancer character who I named "Sayyina".

My idea was (and still is) that she'd be the main character of Arabian Nights–style fantasy adventures. Imagine (for example) that Caroline Munro's character "Margiana" was the main character of The Golden Voyage of Sinbad instead of Sinbad himself, and you get the gist of my intentions. Sayyina would lead a troupe of three other dancers and about four musicians (one of whom is her father), and would travel around a fictional "Hollywoodized" version of the Middle East, contending with treacherous sultans, wicked wizards, and fearsome monsters... all the trappings of a Harryhausen epic!

I think one of the reasons I consider her my first OC is that her physique is more "normal" (e.g., not heavily muscular–although I couldn't resist giving her a little meat in her arms LOL) than my later creations. This was about the time that women's bodybuilding was just getting started, though, and not long after that the muscle-woman became my template for character creation.

And for some reason I'm actually jotting down some story ideas for Sayyina. I have no idea whether it'll ever see the light of day, but... well, sometimes the act of creation cannot be denied. (It can be put off, though, by the other projects I must keep working on!)