Face your daylight horrors!
(Except acorns, it is totally fine to avoid those whenever possible. Seriously, they bother me.)
I am an emotional and enthusiastic person, so here there will be feelings! Mostly good feelings, but awkwardly expressed. That is just how I do things.
isabela…. thanks to my sis who suggested i’d draw her in qunari war paint.
did this in the livestream! thank you so much everyone who was there, it was so fun and we had some very interesting conversation too eheh!
It was such amazing fun to watch this take form! I love seeing WIPs in general, but digital drawing is something that I just do not understand, so to see this grow from the first lines and into this was amazing.
Also, seeing this makes me want to write sexy, sexy things. Isabela is always strong and fierce, but I think with this right here… oh, you turned it up to eleven.
another one… that’s it, I promise
The thing that the recipient enjoys. The thing the recipient enjoys.
hurtled into chaos, you fight… and the world will shake before you
Fire.
Heat and danger, dancing to his call, pulled from the Fade until he could feel his soul crackle with flames, until it poured from his hands or his staff, glorious and terrifying.
Beautiful.
It wasn’t the power itself he craved, though after a lifetime fighting he certainly valued it. It was that moment of beauty. Of light shining where before it had been dark, of heat when it had been cold, of passion where all had been quiet.
Hawke couldn’t abide the quiet. Good thing it didn’t happen very often.
I just want this beauty to come sit here with me.
W.I.P.
This might look totally different in the end, but I kinda like the sketch.
He does not run from room to room to choreograph routines. The mansion is large enough to host many a guest interested in such activities and were perhaps once used for just that back when it was not in such a state of decay, but that is of no importance to him. He makes use of it as he does and lets if fall apart out of reasons and feelings more complicated than either simple convenience or spite.
There is no dancing, but there has to be something to fill the days spent inside with. In a somewhat more habitable room than most there are parchment to fill with brush strokes; a skill he does not recall obtaining but has had time to perfect.
Not all in his life is violence and blood, or death and its following decay. He does not form words as well as images, and so his new hard earned memories are put to paper in the form of what he does best; it seems more fitting that way, as if he is honouring them by doing so.
Images of forests and people from so far away, recreated with a brush to never be forgotten. New places, endless caves and so many faces, some showing up more often than others. A taproom, another mansion, a dwarf and another elf and so many humans, and someone who is perhaps more spirit than mortal man.
At some point the calls of abomination turned into mage, and after so many years spent near him he is finally Anders in his mind. He does not quite recall when he started to view him as more than the host for a demon, but now he does and knows his face better than the others. Where the sharp angles are and how his hair moves in the wind, how he carries himself as he calls upon more magic than anyone should be able to, and how he has hardened over the years, where the frown lines are that the abomination did not have but the mage, the man, Anders now does. He paints it all with brush strokes as careful as a lover’s caress, but he does not colour it. Not because of a lack of coloured paints; it is something he can obtain as he wishes.
He simply does not know if he should make the eyes an amber kindness or a harsh, clear blue, the hue of an other-wordly magic that calls to his markings more than the amber does to his heart.
I tried to draw Hawke and all the possible companions (+ Karl) in that cartoonish style… even Sebastian is there, since it’s his week and all. I’m not yet happy with some of them; gotta do justice to poor Isabela. But I like how Merrill turned out.
PS: Carver, I can’t stand you - like - at all. And I will most certainly never ever draw you again. But hey, I guess the feeling is mutual. Isn’t it? ISN’T IT!? Yeah, I knew it.
Kaaaarl! There are times when I just want to hug a picture close and this is one of those because how charming is this? Well, charming enough to want to hug, obviously! Merrill is so incredibly precious, I want to squish her cheeks. How is someone so dangerous so adorable?
I adore the little details you put in these that makes them all so very them; the tired lines under Anders’ eyes, Fenris’ deeply unamused eyebrows, the stunningly accurate interpretation of Carver’s entire face…
Hey, I like Carver, but I need to keep this sibling rivalry thing going, okay! Teasing is a vital part. I wish the game had a serious “tease Carver”-command, so I could pinch his cheeks and go hey lil’ bro, time for an adventure, who is excited! every ten steps or so and things like that. Then this whole one million points of rivalry thing would make so much more sense.
Also, Kaaaarl!
Such a friendship. Few like your father remain. Even fewer like the templar.
Is that… lace? Or embroidery? Because that looks like lace to me. I know lace, I wear so much lace I know the look of it by now, hawkeward can claim it to be embroidery forever and ever, but that is some seriously lacey-looking stuff right there.
Worn together with a shiny scarf with polka dots. On his head. And then another shiny scarf wrapped around his neck.
And a big pink jewel on his forehead, surrounded by gold.
Do the templars force them to wear this stuff as additional punishment, or are mages in general just attracted to hideous over the top things :| Is that how apostates are generally found out? Spot the walking insult to good taste everywhere? Is it?
Wishing you all the best babydoll.
(one day I will sit down and draw the Arishok for realsies.)
Combo’s comments: Karl’s beard is so sexy even the Arishok wants to hang with him. Who cares if he is a bas sareebas, look at that beard!
A question, would Karl be Bas Saarebas as Tranquil? (The Qunari treat the Saarebas with the utmost caution, as they do with mages in general, referring to unrestrained ones as “Bas Saarebas.) Would he be Saarebas at all? Just curious as to opinion on that because from what I read I would think not, but I don’t follow the Qun so have no idea. Not trying to correct anything either, just wondering.
That is a really interesting question, actually! I have not really thought about it before - since they do not make their mages Tranquil, at least the kossith we meet cannot have encountered many before either. This particular Karl, though, was saved from his Tranquil state by the power of a Final Fantasy XII crossover. Balthier fixed it with manufactured nethecite because that is how he rolls.
But otherwise? I think probably not, either, now that I actually think about it, but I am not sure. I imagine they might see one from afar and go like “that is such lame war paint” before they see it is actually a brand.
I think I lost track of what I was saying somewhere around a few sentences ago.. now I have to ask maybethings about this thing!
“He who fights with beasts should look in to that he himself doesn’t become a beast. If you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”Friedrich Nietzsche
Everything about this is breathtaking and thought-provoking. How he holds the head he once wanted on a pike in his hands, the way he strokes those lips and how his own are the same maddening red lyrium colour as hers, how Meredith’s hair tangles around his arms, the fact that his eyes are a black emptiness staring at hers equally unseeing ones. And for all the gorgeous colour and shading, the depth and details that speaks of life there is this eerie stillness about it, as it they both went too far and turned each other into something that turns to stone in the sunlight.
“Karl?” Anders asked a little too loudly, his voice echoing through the dark, empty stairwell.
“Shhh.” Karl’s soft tenor brushed against Anders’ ear, coupled with the rough scrape of his beard pressed against Anders’ jaw, smooth save for the slight prickly accumulation of an evening’s stubble.
Anders felt a flush creep up into his cheeks. He knew better, really. He was just terrible at sneaking around and keeping quiet, sometimes. He opened his mouth to speak again, but the question that was on his lips had already been forgotten, and he simply nodded instead.
He sighed, and his head dipped heavily against Karl’s shoulder as they sat huddled close together in the shadows at the base of the stairwell. As long as they were still and quiet enough, the templars would miss them for a few rounds, unless they did bed checks, and even then, there were enough apprentices crammed into their quarters for one or two to disappear unnoticed, at least for a while.
Karl fondly patted his head before letting his hand come to rest atop Anders’ knee. It was a gentle, affectionate gesture, not an invitation for something more, but simply content to be what it was — a subtle physical connection between two people who otherwise felt so very disconnected from everything else around them.
Anders threaded his slender fingers through Karl’s, gently, but unreservedly. He felt the tautness in Karl’s body slowly melt away against him. A subdued sense of relaxation spread between them, overriding their mutual fear.
They sat until they lost track of time altogether, bundled in heavy robes and heavier shadows, swimming in silence, save for the beating of their hearts and the rustling of their breath, sharing precious warmth against the cold stone walls until the templars made another round.
Karl, and Anders, and feelings. I have a lot of feelings, as you might have noticed by now, but right now I am having extra many feelings, because Impressioniste writes the best comfort fics. (Also, KARL! As you know.)
I just wrote a very long tirade on why I don’t like this painting, but I decided to just let it be and go to bed.
Sulking.
Good night.
PS: I’m well aware, that for most of you it’s not night yet.
Nonetheless.
Oh my goodness, it is gorgeous. I want to touch his face and feel all the angles.
I hope your tomorrow will be a better one, and that you will be able to see this painting as we see it, then; beautiful, captivating and downright haunting in the very best of ways.
