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[Jeedai]

Below is a draft for what will eventually be a turnaround/ model sheet of Tidebreak, the deep-sea elf in my avatar image <-----

As a being of the deep sea, I figure she should look very strong. So far to get the musculature down I've been working from images of She-Hulk, a couple pages from a Christopher Hart book (Drawing Cutting Edge Anatomy), and what I can google of female atheletes.

But did I go too far? Or did I miss something? I'm not really finding a consistent set of 'rules' for this.



Futher notes: The base figure itself was made by following Wendy Pini's Nightfall model sheet. The tail musculature was derived from yet another source: http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=137721

[Foxeye]

I guess it depends on how far you want to go, but what you've got here looks about right for a female body builder with a compact frame.  Only thing that I think might be off is...quite often I  notice that suck women also have slightly less narrow waists, due to the development of powerful abdominal obliques along the sides. That said, this is an elf, not a human, so the waist is fine   Even human males rarely get the ribcage-to-waist ration of Cutter, for example.

If you wanted a slightly more amazon-esque approach, you could experiment with lengthening the waist and arms.

All in all, I think the level of muscle definition here is entirely feasible for a woman.

[Treefox]

I also think she looks fine.
Concerning references, have a look at "Zula" (Grace Jones) in Conan, the Destroyer. She is a fine model for a muscled female. She blew my socks off. Hawt!
Even though, she might be more the brawny type, not so heavily muscled. Anyway, I think she's hot.

[Tevokkia]

This blog post has an amazing set of photos of both male and female athletes of different body types- some muscular, some not so much. http://ninamatsumoto.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/athletic-body-diversity-reference-for-artists/

[Jeedai]

Thanks for the input and links. 

I did make the waist thicker than Nightfall's to start, so I may keep it as is.

[Pyreite]

Just study photographs of athletes and you'll get a good idea.  It's also good to study some of the more realistic art in comic-books, although I wouldn't recommended anything anime unless its using the more human-realistic style and proportioning rather than the traditional big-eyed, long-legs, and tiny barbie-doll waist look.  You won't get good references on muscle tones or shapes there the body's are usually too flat, too young-looking, and too generic. 

You'd get better results looking at Marvel comics of the female heroines from like X-Men and so on, even Wonder Woman since you can pretty much see her body shape, since she's wearing the equivalent of a lycra body-suit. 

I would recommend probably the old comics the most that used hyper-realistic comic-book art which you don't really see anymore.  Great stuff, provided you can find anything from them printed in the 80's, now, you might find a really good graphic-novel that's a reprint of the old coloured comics drawn before PC's became common, like Pini's graphic novels of all the major EQ story-lines. 

They are hard to find though since the comic-book companies don't generally reprint old editions unless its under special circumstances.  Otherwise yah you're stuck with athlete photographs mostly, which can be difficult unless you've got a real good eye for changes in musculature due to body-weight, height, etc which would make your drawings more accurate.  If you can get the base feminine muscular shapes down, you'll be fine anyway, since it really depends on how realistic you're going for in your artwork.  Hyper-photographic real and viewers can tell where the mistakes are, just ordinary drawing and minimal realism, well, you can get away with more.

~ Pyre