Every year, I paint the same two characters to see how my design, style and skill change. They’re my two favorite characters and I find them to be a fantastic benchmark. The two have had many names over the years, but today we’re talking about Jevai.

This was painted during a particular stormy and rainy week. Wet, overcast weather has a really distinctive and interesting effect on light, and that’s something I wanted to imitate a little in this piece. I pushed the tones really close together, avoiding sharp highlights or dark shadows, expressing the tone and color through smaller shifts in hue and value for the skin tones.

For the clothes and background, however, I wanted to get a lot more wild with the colors, imitating the sorta hazy wet look of cement on a rainy day. Sharp highlights, super reflective, but blurred and hazy. In that respect, I regret not pushing it as far as I could have. But hey, I was getting out of an art slump!

This is definitely my favorite iteration of Jevai though, which just makes me excited for next year!