In Sea of Sky I play around with appearance and perceptions when describing a character from another character's point of view.
Early in chapter one I introduce Susanna; A middle aged sex worker (Legal in setting so immediately established) who is going to act as Lavinia's guide both in Watsonian and Doylist fashions for a lot of the opening world building which is, uh, dense, considering the setting is Space Ship Floating on Alien Planet In the Future.
"She was tall, blonde, and scandalously dressed for Brass; showing skin on her lower thighs and knees which was adored with fishnets that had been beaded in accent patterns. She was also showing a great deal of her ample cleavage, which was as lovingly made up as her face."
"She had a dusting of grey hair and gentle lines in her beautiful face, made up perfectly to highlight her high cheekbones and graceful cupid’s bow"
Lavinia describes Sussa as beautiful and sensual, not despite her age or because of her age -- her being here something like 42 is just a part of her. I'm using a lot of very connotative words here "adorned" "lovingly" "gentle" "graceful" are all things that carry positive connotation. It should be apparent to the reader Lavinia immediately likes her and sees her not only beautiful but as trustworthy and maybe aspirational.
Later on in chapter two I introduce another character, Isolde De'Troyes, who is a like, a mid 20s former special forces magic user. But the POV character is the Deuteragonist, King Griffon Gotriege.
"She was tall and lean, with long fingered hands permanently stained black from spellfire. Her face was also long and angular, with a significant scar sprawling out from her left eye socket over much of the left side of her face, somewhere between a burn and a rupture."
"Her remaining eye was a greyish brown, almost the same color as her hair, and her glass eye was a solid pale blue. The edges of mage's tattoos showed out from under her sleeves and collar along her fingers and throat, and they glowed softly as she maintained concentration on the illusion."
I struggled to write this the first few times because Griffon does not use connotative language regarding appearance almost ever. I was tempted to use "disfiguring" in the place of "Significant" in the description of Isolde's facial scar because that is more broadly how it would be seen on Brass, but that's not how Griffon sees it. Lavinia would (and probably will) describe her hands as either graceful or delicate, but Griffon describes them literally as long-fingered and discolored from her magic use.
I think it would be fair to assume Griffon dosen't really care about Isolde one way or another from this; his description of her is flat, almost uninterested, like she's a bit of furniture. But her introduction is her using a significant show of magic to entertain his daughter, and these are the first words out of his mouth after he greets them;
“Not tiring our sorceress out are we?” Griffin ruffled Julia's (his daughter) hair, and she threw her arms around him.
Just me having fun with a bit of character writing, trying to tell you about them without always telling you about them.
