DuoDraw Art Contest 1 - Love and War

LOL what a title.....

Anyways, @hanbun recently announced a contest for her #duodraw themed challenge. Basically it's about doing an art which the themes presented juxtaposed each other. And for this theme, it's about Eros and Agape. Basically Eros can be compared to intimate/sexual love while Agape can be associated with holy/unconditional love. Both are in Greek, and both come out frequently in philosophy and psychology studies. (In this case, I guess @hanbun got this from one of my university's subject called Media Aesthetics... maybe). Plus, it's almost Valentine's Day, thus the contest's theme.

Anyways, this is my entry.

And the steps. First up is the drawing/pencilling.

Notice that there are lines behind the characters. Will get to it later.

Next is the inking.

Base colors. Basically I just put red on their attire because of the common color of this particular costume. The others are attempts to contrast and blend in with the color pallette. Hope it goes well...

Next up is the details, shadows and all that.

Next is the background. It's a simple black and white with a familiar pattern.

This pattern is very synonymous with the Oriental culture and philosophy, will get to it later.

Final adjustments and composition and that's about it...

I guess I need an explanation for this...

The reason that I draw this kind of pose is that rather than the affectionate love that you kinda seen almost everywhere, I faced my character as if they are having a spar, although to be quite fair, this concept is not quite new either. Case in point is, love is not as sweet as it seems. Sometimes to know love is to feel suffering. This is where you can learn and adapt it to have a better life. If I really want to give a backstory for these characters, these two are sparring partners when they were a child. Because of that, they each know each others strength and weaknesses. And since both of them know each other as a child, they know each others well being despite being friendly rivals. Thus, both of their love and affection are gained through understanding.

About the background, most of you are quite familiar with it. If not, it is the symbol of Yin and Yang, which means Positive and Negative respectively. The idea of this kind of philosophy is that everything has a complementary, interconnected duality. One simple example is when there is light, there is dark. For this drawing, it is placed based on gender. Male is associated with white and they are always aggressive as in the Yin, while the female is associated with black and they are as passive as in the Yang. That doesn't mean that is their absolute trait. To juxtapose it more, their hair color is the reverse of the background respectively.

And the other reason of those costume is..... It's also almost Chinese New Year too! This time it's just mere days after Valentine's Day, so that's something to draw.

Anyways, have a good February doods and doodettes! :D

Credits to @zoomagic