You have such a knack for ending up with beautiful and elegant art that I just know this will turn out amazing. I will only make a comment that may not be your style or thing...The eye is too beautiful, serene and even sweet looking. As you work on this remember that Medusa is evil at heart and the way to the soul is in the eyes. Be yourself but let her be her too.

maybe a more snake-ish eye, with the aid of some AA, will give her a more "predator" look. also, i was about to suggest you to use some CLAMP references for some hyper-streamlined eyes that maigth be a good reference. specially those from X ilustrations.

slaudos!

Thanks Metaru and Alejav, CLAMP-y snake eyes are actually just what I had in mind!  The snaky pupils aren't really apparent at the moment, though

Here is an update, with a possible palette underneath. 
I made the eyes a little thinner, with a slightly thicker outlining, and a more downturned eyebrow.
I will definitely be tweaking the palette, but this is the general colour scheme I think I'm aiming for, with coppery yellows shifting to reds.
Ignore the shading for now, it was mostly just me testing things out a bit

In some ways... it's the centre of interest in the picture, but I'm not necessarily aiming for it to pop out at the viewer right away.  I'm hoping that by texturing all the snakes, the face (and eye) will be given extra emphasis by contrast .

Here is an update.  I'm trying some new things and attempting to dither a little... we'll see how it goes .  Oh, and I changed some of the colours from the palette below, so that's not up-to-date.



Suggestions welcome; thanks!

it's coming together very nicely, keep it up! :)

i could suggest you an small animation of the eye. but not now. please keep up the good work.

Thanks for the kind words, everyone 
Here's an update; need to finish off the snakes, then deepen the shadows (some of the snakes are too shiny) and tweak the aa.  Also planning on adding a bluish tone to the shadows.
9 colours




Edited by MashPotato - 23 June 2007 at 7:52am

I almost want to see her mouth and a big, long pointed snakey tongue. :D:D

Thanks--I had noticed the tangent before, but as an example of one-track thinking I tried to fix it with shading and didn't even think of changing the position .  I'm fixing that now, and have also altered the eye slightly.  Alejav, sorry, but no snake tongue in this one

EDIT: forgot to post the update!  This was done before changing the head position:




Edited by MashPotato - 24 June 2007 at 10:43am

well okay. The snakeys are so cuuute. :D

Wow, had missed some progress on this. I just knew you'd make it look awesome. I am however surprised with the color choices. I did not see dingy browns happening on this. I envisioned blue/greens for some reason.
On a design note the perfectly vertical head of the snake head by the eye actually distracts from the eye a bit too much.

hehe, makes sense. I see 'you' as more marble than stone tho.