The Vigil

He keeps a lone vigil in the cloister, bowed by his sorrow but not quite resigned to it yet. He's been in more battles than he cares to remember; they left their mark on his body in the form of scars and in his mind in vivid flashes that sometimes jolt him awake at night. He is cold, ruthless when necessary, reliably capable. And yet, no matter how able and powerful a warrior he is, he could not save her.

This is a piece about grief. I've had the idea in my mind for some time but hadn't figured out how to execute it until I woke up a few nights ago with this image in my head; I sat up in bed and threw together a 3D model (you can see the initial one if you swipe above, I later tweaked the pose so he had a hand to his face) in MagicPoser, then imported it into Procreate. I'd seen artists in tutorials make models and then paint directly on top of the models to save time; since I don't have a lot of time to paint, I decided to try that method. This was about 20 hours worth of work (compared to my usual up to 55 hours); I also used photobashing for the floor and stamp brushes for the flowers and the trim on her gown. For whatever reason, I originally painted this in blue (swipe above for original version). Cleaned up in GIMP.

What I did NOT use at any step of this process: AI.