I've fixed up the profile image of the head to match up with the front view better. I've also drawn a couple of body references.

A common technique for clothes is to extrude off the body parts then extend into the clothing items of choice.
It helps when animating as the clothes are linked directly to the animated parts and so form part of the process by default, guiding the finishing touches for a complete animation.
Saves on poly count too.
Cheers.

@Nemesis: Would that mean "drawing" the clothes on with a cutting tool?

Joan of Arc

Take a look at how they do it here.

Yes, I've got that tutorial. Though it looks more difficult than the cylinder method, I think I'll try to go with it. I downloaded the model that the author used to make the cylinder tutorial and it looked aweful. It had holes in it and the face was pug ugly, even at over 3000 polies when converted to triangles.

Like I said, mix and match...

Once you get the body done with the cylinder method, use the method laid out in the joan of arc tutorial for the clothing.

I've started the body.

I'm grateful for any comments or advice, since this is my first model.




At least I know the arms need work. I can now see the wisdom in drawing the reference with the arms down. They look like sausages from the top. I'll make another refence pic of the side of her arm and edit it in the top view.

it really looks great so far, but your modeling in a high poly style with quads. there is nothing wrong with this style of modeling but for realtime stuff its gives you way more polys than you need. if you plan on a ruduction meathod of some sort this could be fine too. i suggest doing a poly count and seeing how may you got so far. here is a good tutorial that shows some good techniques for low poly humans


http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials/benmathis/benmathis_1.asp

So far it is 436 polies total.

I might be wrong, but the tutorial you linked looks similar to what I am doing, though it has half as many sections in the torso. I can fix that. Before I go any further should I see how many I can remove and still keep her shape, or can I leave that util finsh the model? I haven't started working on muscle definition yet, and when I do I want to keep it softer than in the tutorials I've seen so far. Maybe that'll help keep the poly count down. I'm less confident about my work on the arms than the legs. Do they look like they are joined on okay?

Thanks for your advice.

Where is your entry?

I think you are counting quads, not tris. (leg = 8 x 10 x 2 = 160) x 2 = 320. Arms are about the same and the torso is about the same as one arm. Not sure if lightwave handles it's polygon counts the same way as Maya - but it looks as though it might. Still should be OK on your polygon budget though. You have plenty of room to work with.