Shoot That Poison Arrow

Thanks to DW7 costume DLC, Lu Meng and Xiahou Yuan now have a friendly rivalry in my headcanon over the merits of arrows vs. bullets. And possibly over Cao Ren, if I can squish a bunbuku chagama into European fairy tale tropes. Be very, very quiet. We're hunting tanuki. Huh huh huh huh huh.

This was supposed to be a shorter project. It exploded into some challenging style work. I switched up the detail on Yuan's costume, taking laces and grommets and stripes from elsewhere, because the lack of texture was driving me batty. Relief and patterns make it much easier for me to show a sense of form and material. I kept bouncing back and forth between loving the storybook feel of this piece and banging my head on simple-seeming components that refused to behave themselves. Now that the albatross has flown, I wholeheartedly love it.

Drawn freehand in Manga Studio with help from parallel rulers for the gun barrels. The ruler lines are too mechanically precise for this style, so I traced over them myself to get the intended effect of drawing along a physical ruler.

Time: After the rough sketch, 3 weeks of semi-dedicated free time with some interruption for weekend travel.