The Heir

And here’s part two to the previous work. In my mind, the Heiress is the leader of a criminal organization. She’s a master of manipulation, blackmail and extortion. When folks get mad and catch on to what she’s up to however, that’s when the Heir steps in as her bodyguard. I don’t currently have any plans to use these characters in any larger project, like a comic or animation, but they’ve existed in one form or another since around 2013. They’re definitely some of my oldest characters, originally, the Heir was named Cold, and the Heiress was Beep, her name quickly changing to Summers. Some parts of their designs have changed substantially, others changing less. The Heiress being bald in fact was a recent change, only since about 2019, and the Heir’s hair slowly went from white to blue. He’s always had the blue beany though.

Alright, enough about the characters, lets get into detail about this work itself. I wanted to use a blueish reflected light from the right side, and a bright orange one from the left. That I believe was consistent to both paintings, plus that side-by-side, they’re facing each other, and the colored backgrounds vaguely match up in hue. Its a specific kind of lighting I see all the time, yet have trouble replicating. I think I did a fair job here though, at least better than in the Heiress. I also did a technique I shamelessly pulled from WLOP, an artist I find very inspiring. They paint the faces of their characters with incredible detail, and go more impressionist further out. Golden jewelery in WLOP’s work often are just 2 brush strokes, a dark blob with a light reflection. No blending, just the two colors on top of each other. Your eyes are pulled to the face, putting the rest of it in your peripherals and somehow it all looks flawlessly detailed despite the lack of detail. I don’t quite have the confidence or skill to pull that off, but I’m slowly moving more in that direction, using larger brush strokes and thicker colors for areas out of focus, like the fur, or the purple cloak. There’s still a long way to go though.

I am very proud of how I painted the face here though. The expression and subtle skin tone shifts are things I’m definitely seeing a lot of improvement in, and when I next try to paint these two, I have no doubt they will be tremendously improved.