Loving You (mild spoiler)

 Can you tell I'm having fun exploring the inking medium in my art? It's not that I haven't done inking before; I've been inking pictures ever since I was young. However, I've never gone this in depth on composition with inking. Again, the Nausicaä manga provided a huge inspiration for me to explore this side of my art a lot deeper. I'm excited at the thought of being able to illustrate my own books, sharing my storytelling through both words and art.

"You are so dear to me, golden owl. If I die, I will die having loved you. Please, let me go." ~Sabra the Incarnate, Incarnate Truth

This is based on a scene from Book V of The Legacy Incarnate: Incarnate Truth. I won't go into the context of the scene, as I don't want to spoil it too much, but it's a piece I've had in mind for a while. I wanted to draw emphasis to the way her golden owl is trying to keep Sabra from leaving, while an ominous claw reaches out to her, ready to take her away. I wanted to portray Sabra as compassionate and unafraid as she is transferred between these two characters.

I tend to layer different sketches
in this book as I come up
with a final piece.

I did several thumbnail concepts for this, trying to get the posing and placement correct. I have one thumbnail here, but I had more and just had difficulty adjusting the contrast for them because I did them with 2H pencil, i.e. they're really light! I also had to reference some great horned owl pictures to get the owl's body and patterning right. Owls are amazing, aren't they?

For those curious about the tools I'm using for these illustrations, I'm using a Grumbacher Mixed Media 7x10 inch sketchbook. It has thick pages, which allows me to do an inked piece on one side and sketches on the page backside without the pictures showing through.

At first I was skeptical about the spiral-bound nature of the book and the removable pages, but since the pages are so thick and sturdy, it's easy to remove them and replace them without damaging the pages.

For drawing I use Staedtler Mars Lumograph pencils, and for inking I use Kingart Inkline Pens. Both are elegant and sturdy tools. The pencils I've been using for years, and they just keep going!

Thanks for reading!