'Gator Batin'

It started as a drunken dare her senior year of high school.  Madison had grown up hardier than her peers...in many ways...but no one imagined she’d build up enough liquid courage to tangle with a “cocodrie”.  It was still a young lizard at the time and Madison had little trouble pulling it out the swamp to flip it on its back and put it to sleep. 

The drunken dare became a Friday night party trick, and as she grew up so did the gator.  Despite reaching a prehistoric 20 feet, weighing in at a clear ton, the years of tussling with the lizard had made her strong, strapping young woman.  Stronger, to everyone’s confusion, than the record-breaking gator. 

Despite worn claws, broken teeth, and cracked hide, the gator kept coming back to visit.  Every Friday night, a playfully drunken Madison teased and tussled with the monster to the endless entertainment of her friends... and the loss of whatever she was wearing that evening.

This great little story was generously (and anonymously) written by someone watching the picarto stream, thanks friend :)

Big thanks to MuscleCar3DX for the inspiration, all credit for this great pose goes to him! He shared a WIP of this new render he's been working on, and I felt spontaneously inspired to draw it! 

This pose checks a lot of boxes for me. I love the way her carefree attitude shows she isn't worried at all about getting hurt (and also the way the story implies the gator is somehow enjoying all the wrasslin as well)

This ended up being my first of 4 sketches on Sunday's Picarto livestream, taking about 3 hours to complete. It was a helpful challenge trying to paint a picture with way too much detail to fully capture all of it, which encouraged me to reduce details to more abstract representations (like the croc scales for example).

Normally I'd consider a hand like this too "unfinished" to see the light of day, but in a busy scene like this, it gets the job done well enough, I think?