i love love love the way you paint back lighting!! do you have any tips/ a step by step for the way you do it?
ended up making a whole painting just to break it down and explain my general process for subjects lit from behind so heres that + a timelapse!
main thing for drawing anything with a strong light source behind is to make the main subject Darker and more desaturated to convey that the light is behind them rather than to their sides (face cant be properly lit if the light is behind). Also making the Main highlight the brightest hue in the image helps to intensify it. I tend to use teeth/eyes as a good comparison point
some people have a tendency to make the sclera white out of habit but darkening that+ the rest of the whites helps the image read as Darker compared to the brighter highlight
Nico and Percy's dynamic through the series is eternally funny to me, because it's just. like.
Percy's having a constant mental struggle between his fatal flaw of loyalty with a promise he made to Bianca to protect Nico, versus his Big 3 kid desire to maim other Big 3 kids / Poseidon descendant urge to totally maim Nico specifically. He hates Nico so so much. He thinks Nico's annoying and weird at best, and creepy/sketchy when he's older. The only positive thoughts Percy has towards Nico are "He's Bianca's brother and Bianca was my friend and I owe her/He's Hazel's brother and Hazel is my friend and would kill me if I was mean to him," "He's a powerful asset and useful ally (if questionable)," and "He's kinda pathetic and I feel maybe a little bad about it." Percy has multiple occasions throughout the series where he strongly considers - and on one occasionally actually goes through with - throttling Nico.
Meanwhile, Nico is following around Percy like a lost puppy. He explicitly can never bring himself to even dislike anything about Percy no matter how hard he tries. He has a whole bit in BoO where he's mentally going "UGH he's so stupid BUT IT'S ENDEARING HOW DARE HE." He's totally smitten. He's making deals with his dad for Percy. He's making convoluted plans to help Percy stand a chance against Kronos. During the entirety of BoTL it's like he's playing tsundere - "I'm helping NOT PERCY SPECIFICALLY with this quest! Me helping Percy would be SILLY because I DEFINITELY HATE HIM." Then he proceeds to show up to Percy's birthday party to basically ask him on a weird date and spend the entire next book scrambling around trying to help him or protect him or impress him. And Percy could not give less of a shit.
Just. That dynamic is so funny to me. Percy is the founder of the Nico Protection Club in that he's the one they're all protecting Nico from and meanwhile Nico is throwing himself at Percy to the point where the literal god of gay love calls him out on it.
i think its very fun to consider the mc as another king like obviously not the same way as the devil kings but in two ways: one being that you are the descendant of the wise king, solomon, and what he had has been inherited by you, but also as in the mc having rule over a very small, but wholly devoted kingdom.
and by that i mean minhyeok.
sure it was a kids game, him swearing his loyalty to you and you ordaining him as your knight, but that kids game became his reality. he is your only subject but he will never leave you. whatever he can do to protect you, he'll jump to it in a heartbeat even if in the end it costs him his life. but a king cannot be a king with no one to rule, which is why when it was your turn to save him there was no hesitation to literally make a deal with the devil to keep him alive. and he will wait as long as it takes until you return and he can be by your side again
thinking about how Icarus checked to make sure they had two pickaxes when they were flying over to coop after Jamie and Easton asked them to. thinking about it.