Deco Leia started with an idea to decorate my apartment with art deco style portraits of Star Wars characters. I looked at several Art Deco posters to get ideas, and the style ended up really suiting  her character. 

While researching for this image, it seemed the 1920's era Deco magazine covers and dress styles seemed most suited to what I was attempting to capture in an image of Leia.

I wanted to capture the elegance of the elongated bodies and the use of lighting that reflected off of objects and faces.

The dress Carrie Fisher wore during the end of a New Hope seemed to best match the loose hanging dresses from the 1920's. I did not like the braid from the end of the movie, so I opted to go with the classic hair buns instead. This choice made me think that maybe this was a dress she had for a while, and she just pulled it out of the closet for the ceremony at the end of Star Wars. I liked the idea of her wearing it in her royal palace on Alderaan before the Rebellion had fully formed. That thought directed the rest of the image for me.

I stylized the dress in the vector design to make the sheer material a little more elegant. I used Carrie Fisher's profile as a guide to capture her look while still only using minimalistic shapes. In the photo, she was looking down. I lifted her chin and focused the pupil toward the sky to give a sense that she is proud, strong, and looking toward the future of the Rebellion she is launching.

For the decoration, I wanted something reminiscent of Art Deco era designs. Using the Rebel logo, I took out the middle portion indicating (in my mind anyway) that perhaps the symbol was inspired by something she had seen growing up.

Using that shape, I created the pattern for the metal lattice inspired by other Deco patterns.

Contrast in scale is a common motif in Art Deco, so I used the image of the mountains to give the feeling that she is very large by comparison. The launching X-wing formation was partly included to solidify this as a Star Wars image, but I also used them as a suggestion that she had just given the order to launch them.

I overlapped the sky with transparent rectangles to reflect a look common in Deco style and to give the feeling of motion as her plans are being launched.

Since there was not a clear source of light in the picture, I took the artistic license of making the white dress her light source. It creates the reflections under her chin and arms which ends up completing the larger than life Deco feeling I was looking for. 

Finally, I overlapped the picture with an old paper texture to give the look we are accustomed to seeing in old Deco prints.