Digital Painting - This needed to be done!

I love me touchy feely romance :3

As part of the COL CCG project, I've made an effort to make quality illustrations for the cards, some more quality than others.  This particular painting is close to me, and is a picture I've needed to draw for some time.

It depicts a scene from Founders Part 1 after Skandar confesses his reason for marrying Ayaka, and Ayaka allows him to remove her mask of maidenhood, her deepest gesture of trust and appreciation.

This picture was originally hand-drawn in pencil, and I scanned it in and went over all the major lines in black.  It made the curves of the lines less natural, but it turned out cleaner than it would have otherwise.

I did the background to get an idea of the major light source, and then colored in the characters.  I did Skandar's glowing body runes so I would get a good idea of lighting on him as well.

After filling in the colors, I started to shade Skandar using a brush.  However, it was looking kind of sloppy, so I tried a different technique I learned from my friend Taelifoe.  I used the gradient tool to cast dark shades over Skandar, and then erased areas that were supposed to be lit. I used the same technique on Ayaka. While it doesn't have as much detail as the brush method, it has a softer effect, which really complements the mood of the picture.  I did very little brushing for lighting and shading.  Their hair I used a brush for shading and highlighting.

Original pencil drawing.

Aside from art, I've been tackling my writing of Incarnate Choice, and I'm still working on the Incarnate Memory.  I was talking to my husband about how to keep the Legacy Incarnate series and Sabra as a character fresh to readers.  He used the example of a series he had read and told me how the character is constantly adapting to different situations, along with his personal growth.  I've been trying to keep that in mind as I write, as I don't want Sabra to become a stale character or, even worse, a Mary-Sue.  She has developed throughout the series and has had to adapt to several situations, so I hope I can keep it going.


I've updated my progress bars on the left side of Xenithar's Lair, and I've added more link buttons so you can stalk find me at different places online.

Everyone have a nice evening :)