Aurum and Hadley

Drawn Sept 19 - Oct 17 2024
The villain couple~ I'll mostly talk about Hadley here though since my followers already know about Aurum
She's a british girl with a curse that Aurum met as a teen. She's not much better a person than her boyfriend... just seemingly not as actively malicious- and more than anything, busy dealing with his bs.

This is a combination of two sketchpages. You can tell I was figuring out how I wanted to draw Hadley as I went... The top-left is sort of the first time I was figuring out her colours (I also was experimenting with Aurum's here... I wasn't used to using duller colours)
I say sort of because her initial concept art did have some rough colours. You guys remember? She was stood beside Suchai, Lake and Mirza haha. At that time I had some concepts for characters but I had no idea what to do with her or those others so it changed a few times. Even after she got added to Aurum's universe her role changed drastically (which, his got combined with some of the other random concepts I posted at that time)

Speaking of top-left though. Krita has this erase layer mode that I haven't seen on other programs I've used? Maybe I can find it somewhere else, but it's super useful for doing multiple versions of something. I used it here for the jewelry, but I decided to colour the drawing and therefore I never actually needed it....
Related is another nice feature, definitely in other programs, grouping layers together. I have the jewelry inking, colouring, and that erase layer grouped together so I can just turn on & off that group all at once, while still getting to keep all those as seperate layers.

Top middle: Hadley is definitely Aurum's number one supporter. He does not appreciate her enough.

Top right is when Hadley and Aurum were teens. They met around this time, Hadley's family having moved to America from London recently.
Since they both were still living with their families, they looked very different...
This would also be not long after Aurum lost his left eye, but you wouldn't be able to tell.

Middle right: It's not the most visible, but I realized the thing on Hadley's cheek kinda resembles an eye. You can tell Aurum's made this joke a million times already.... but I mean, how many people get to make that specific joke, right?

Bottom left: Ok so listen, right? Your boyfriend comes home with this 'cursed artifact' that glows bright green. Even though magic definitely exists, you can't rule out the possibility that's just radioactive, right?
He does this shit every week.

Bottom right: Quote from Snapcube's Sonic Riders improvised fandub
Since we're talking queer identities- Hadley's also intersex, but he already knows that one.

Unrelated to this sketchpage:
The two both steal the other's clothes, so while they've still got their own styles/preferences, they've kinda melded together.
Hadley will wear clothes until they completely and utterly fall apart. Aurum will not, so she tends to take his old clothes and/or reuse the fabric from it.
The really flashy stuff and weird jewelry Aurum has are kind of off-putting to Hadley. She doesn't touch those.