isei-silva:

It’s unfortunate that Exarch Hataaru died because I shipped him and Exarch Naielle so hard like they argued a lot and sure each took their job seriously, but I like to think sometimes they’d ‘keep the peace’ their own way. I really liked the dynamics between the old artificer and the strong-willed rangari. 

Also I headcanon that Naielle is rather flat-chested.

isei-silva:

This is about as much as I want to work on this and it’s about the culmination of most of the small tutorials I’ve been practicing through this art block. Lots of anatomy and painting! And I know some (or a lot) will look at this and think that I’ve gone WAY overboard with the lighting and coloring and I’m just all out and all over the place. And that’s good. That’s what I was aiming for. Usually what held me back at learning something new was that “Is this too much?” feeling when you just learn something but are too scared to apply it in your work.

I say GO ALL OUT. Like, seriously, TRY TOO HARD – that’s what you should go for when you learn something new. You’ll have time to be more studious and cautious later, but when learning something new my best experience has been that ‘taking the plunge’ feel at putting ALL I know and then some into one piece. I’ve learned from this. I’ll probably look at this in four months from now or a year or so and go “wow this is terrible look at all these errors in anatomy and lighting” and that’s good because that’s how I’ll know I’ve learned. 

I’ve tried too hard, and I’m happy about that.