ChinchillaChris67 asked me to draw Sooraya Qadir, also known as the X-Man Dust, and in return he made a generous donation to the Providence Animal Center.



Sooraya is referred to as a living sandstorm, able to transform herself into sand when needed. Here, I tried to show her using her power in a limited sense, just giving a minor display as she formed a small sculpture. Dust was born in Afghanistan, and chose to continue to wear her niqab while living with the other X-Men in New York. There seem to be a few variations in style, both in the comic and in the real world, but I tried to get as close to the Marvel comic version as I could while respecting the actual clothing. For instance, I think she would be wearing a veil rather than a close-fitting mask in reality, but the mask allows for some freedom in showing her expressions (when she's yelling, for instance) that a veil would not. That was one artistic liberty I let myself mimic from the comic pages.



Thank you, Chris, for commissioning me! I hope I met your expectations.







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Disclaimer: I’m red-green colorblind. Because of this, it’s difficult for me to tell similar shades/hues of different colors apart, and, therefore, I need to work with very limited palettes when I color pieces. For shading and highlights, I’ll start with a gray base and lighten or darken shades from there, and then add a color overlay (and, for some skin tones, attempt to add a blue overlay to make it less “hot”). I’ve often been told to be bolder in my highlighting and shading, and I’m trying to be so, but… sometimes it still seems pretty tame. I’m just saying this in case you mentioned I need to do that on a previous piece – I’m not ignoring you, and I appreciate the input. It’s just not very easy for me to implement confidently.