Apologies and 'notes' for new piece.

 Sorry for being so inactive lately, I've been sleepy a lot lately. But now I'm battling to get back into the game!

 Also, there's an art contest and the piece I'm working on for it.

 The contest is the dA "Color-me-club" January line art contest. This month's theme is Sci-fi/dancing.

 It's supposed to be a choice between the two, but I decided to combine the two themes together for fun.

 I decided on a retro-futuristic set of space travellers in an almost 'Wallace and Gromit' style space ship. So helmets, skin tight jumpsuits, if I ever colour this, a lot of orange. I'm hoping they look a-ethnic, so can be coloured as different ethnicities depending on what the colourist wants. I also wanted a nomad from the harsh cold mountains, and during the second pass, I decided to have her look South East Asian/Mongolian. Kind of happened by accident, but I liked it so I'm keeping it. She's going to be wearing furs, skins and knitted clothes for a challenging mix of textures. Also, because if I lived in the tundra, that's what I'd be wearing.

 I also decided to give her a mammoth. Because its science fiction and I can.

 Also, I wish we still had mammoths.

 I've knocked up a series of notes over the last couple of days to plot the composition and details, as I like to know what I'm drawing in a piece like this before I start.

 Here are my initial drawings:

First pass

Second pass

  This is where I decide where I want what where on a two dimensional view.

 After using Colors! 3D (I'll have a review up after I've got more pictures to show), I've been influenced to see a picture as a series of planes, or 2D images in front of each other.

 So this prompted a sketch of each plane and what I wanted in it.

Various planes and their contents

 As well as planning the composition like this, I also concentrated on details. The most important being the dancing couple in the fore ground. So I designed the women's faces and sketched out some thumbs and passes on their poses.

The Ladieeeez

 I think if I copy any of these poses, it'll come across as stiff, so I'm planning to play it loose and more or less wing their positions.

 I also sketched out some of the background details, like a robot radio, the mammoth, the space-woman's fellow crew members, the rocket and an instrument.

Background details

 So far, so good.

 I'm already to get going on this. I'm going to start today on A3 bristol board, so wish me luck and hope the drawing goes well!