#ryder todd

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Wip of an Ancient Greek inspired piece

Being an art student means lots of art history classes and right now I’m going through Greek art (I’ve studied so much Roman and Christian art oh my godddddddddddd). My family is also Greek so it’s been fun to connect to it and add some of it to my own work.

Lots of choices in the poses and clothing here, I’ve put Ryder in a pelos :)

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Boys don’t cry

Harvesters, while mainly about Oliver’s journey, also has a lot about Ryder’s life, including his troubled home-life and upbringing.

I love making Oliver and Ryder’s relationship because it’s both a cool brother friendship and also animal/spirit companion, my two favorite dynamics :>

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Helping the homie get those pin feathers :)

I imagine it’s a nice thing to do between friends, brothers, etc. between harvesters, helping them molt, get pin feathers, pluck damaged feathers, etc.

And even tho Oliver only has one wing, it still needs to be taken care of

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The brightest star

I don’t give my boy Ryder enough love so here a full coloured piece of him :)

And since I don’t talk about him much, I will say he’s a Seer but he’s incredibly unusual in his family. Seer magic is very variable and its abilities and characteristics change from family to family. His family’s magic was only supposed to be inherited from mother to a single daughter in the family but instead of his older sister, Jacklyn, inheriting their mother’s powers, he did.

Ryder’s powers are mainly about intuition and reading people. He can “see” ahead with his mind to see if the way is clear (think like “free camera” mode in a video game where you can look around and aren’t locked to just your character’s perspective). He also is Bonded (magical best friend brother bond!) with Oliver and so they can share their thoughts with one another. His most powerful skill though, besides some pretty good telekinesis, is the ability to read people. Ryder is pretty good at just reading people at a glance, their emotions and surface thoughts, but if he wanted to he could delve deep into their memories and innermost thoughts. He’s doesn’t like using this ability though.

His family’s power is connected to their family Spirit; a two-headed vixen and also the stars/constellations.

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Tithe to Dionysus

Holy shit this one was an UNDERTAKING. but look, it’s finally complete.

In total, this took 7 hrs and 51 min.

But I’m so happy with the finished result, I really tried to push myself with the background, clothing, rendering, everything! :)

I did also put in a lot of thought to the background and Ryder’s clothing, which I attempted to make both pretty historically accurate (though Ryder wearing a peplos with red trim may be a bit fantastical, but Greek women did wear a lot of bright patterns! hahahaha). The temple they’re in is actually inspired by a couple different Doric-style Greek temples, which is I chose for the columns here. I did two rows of columns, with an aisle in between, opening into the naos, where there’s a pool of shallow water.

Also of note is Oliver is depicted pretty small here, he’s usually much bigger in this form :)