"Elf versus Human" by Michael A Rasmussen

I absolutely love the way this picture turned out.  The main focus of this was trying to kick my habit of drawing things too far away.  I'm trying to get better at drawing things up close, hence the human in the foreground.  Of course, the other point of the picture is to model my first elf from the new fantasy world I'm creating.

Here's the idea behind this scene.  A small battle between some elves and some humans is taking place.  The weapons used are mainly swords, on both sides--but with huge differences.  The human numbers are larger and less trained--the one depicted here is just a standard infantry unit, raising his shield to the elf's blindingly fast bladework.  These elves are charging into the mass of opponents, keeping a lot of distance between one another; they leap and dodge and slice through the enemy with honed precision, and the effect is psychologically overwhelming to most of the human force.
Elves are fragile--a large, deep scratch will usually mean death.  The ones who survive battles are the trained ones who can go through a fight without getting so much as a tear in their clothing.  (Because of this, their battle attire can afford to be more decorative.  Armor can only slow them down.)

And, while we're on the subject of clothes, I might as well point out a couple of features in the elf's garb.  His odd shoes are in fact the only kind that elves wear; elves walk on their toes all the time--their feet are actually built different than humans'.  It's part of their natural agility.  The other piece of his clothing I'd like to point out is the mass of trailing cloth that makes up his right sleeve.  This is used to help stop his rotation in midair so that he can face in whatever direction he likes--the spinning can be hard to control otherwise, since they're trained to get the most out of their maneuvers for strike speed and damaging potential.

This is one of those pictures which, aside from the other motivations, I wanted to do just to make costumes for my subjects!  xD  The costumes are the highlight of the drawing phase, for me.  ^_^

Well, I'm anxious to see what you all think.  All was done with a mechanical pencil, with a computer program for touch-up (clearing out the smudges).
All comments welcome; and I promise to return the favor!  ^_^