AGNI

Man, this one took me waaay too long to finish. I had a lot of obstacles, from a lot of work to hurting my drawing hand, besides deciding to draw in this style that is still way outside my comfort zone...

Anyway, this is a raksha NPC from the Exalted RPG that I was requested to draw. I offered drawings for people in the Exalted forum who donated copies of Shards of the Exalted Dream ([link]) and this is the first of them.

Dude is called Agni, a Fae Lord with skin of bronze and embedded adamant gemstones, wild hair with a flame-like behavior, two seemingly impractical gossamer swords he can still use easily, Two bracers of perpetually melting steel, and a ship in perpetual flames that don't burn it down and don't go out in the water.

Drawn and colored digitally in Photoshop with my Genius tablet. Considered making a better background with the sun and some clouds visible, but I thought I already had complicated enough light and shadow sources with which to deal...

Note to self: Drawing fire in even a semi-realistic fashion is stupidly hard. Same for polished, reflective metal, especially with all the fire around it!

Note to self 2: Do not attempt to fulfill a drawing request while trying out a different style from your usual. It is really not fair to make the person 2 months for such a drawing >_<

Used some resources made by other people:
Hazes and Flames brush set by
Cosmic brush set by
the pattern in the clothing from
Fire brush set and pattern set from [link]