Here's a really old one I made in 2007 featuring a pair of my original characters, the protagonist of my main series. Evan Hathaway (aka: Starglider) is holding the lifeless body of his love, Nika Gabbet. In this scene, Evan has just finished dueling against Dret Odius, a villain who had cursed Nika and took her life as a way to hurt the hero. It's a tragic scene and I it was very difficult for me to decide whether or not to seal her fate or find a way to bring her back...

What do you think I should I do? ;)

The Line Art

In 2007 I was making my digital art without the use of a drawing tablet or ipad. Therefore, my drawing was made first using pencil and paper, which I traced with black ink and erased my pencil lines for a clean line art. Because of the way I drew in the past, I do not have a pencil sketch versions of my art like I keep nowadays. I was always on the lookout for quality pens, especially fine tip pens so I could put in more smaller detail without worrying about the ink making a mess to the lines being too thick.

The Finished Illustration

I would scan my inked drawing so I could add color to it using Adobe Photoshop. I didn't know how to separate the black and white of my line art layer at the time, so I didn't do any fancy color holds. Almost all my art back then used cel-styled shading to make it look like a cartoon or comic book. Alas, that is still my dream someday to produce and publish my Starglider story as a series of graphic novels.

Even though this is a pretty old drawing, I still like the composition. I would draw Nika's mouth in today but I guess at the time I wanted it to look like she was lifeless... and that somehow shows your mouth closed? That's cartoon physics for you. I do think that Evan looks like he's an agony. The pain of losing the woman you intended to spend the rest of your life with is no joking matter. How will our hero make it through this one?