A portrait of Carmille, posing with another portrait of her little sister Viande! \o/ Flat colors and lineart are my bread-and-butter, and I don't do fully-rendered paintings very often - in fact, I think this may be the first big painted illustration I've done in years(??), so some parts were subsequently a struggle. But I had a blissfully happy time practicing lots of new techniques! The hard work was worth it to figure out how to draw my girls in lavish detail!
hello I feel slightly less awful and so I have returned to you with some knights. :) tagged over the past [mumbles] by the wonderful @leashybebes @capthawkeyepierce @curlyboys @corporatebanana @wee-fuckin-woo @ambernotember @pluralityofaxes @a-mel0n. tagging you all back along with @sugarpenchant @emphasisonthehomo @trombonechurchill @rcmclachlan @geddyqueer and whoever else wants to share.
look. blacksmith hen came to me in a vision and I could not say no.
from bucktommy knight au aka sweetmeats aka what can ail thee, knight-at-arms?
this takes place before buck & tommy meet.
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The resonant ring of hammer on steel set Buck's teeth on edge as he approached the smithy, the dregs of last night's revelry rancid on the back of his tongue. He had, perhaps, let himself be goaded into one drink too many, but was there any better way to bid the Keep a proper farewell? He did not think so, and his friends had lustily agreed.
And yet, even as every piercing clang rang physically through Buck's very skull, Hen seemed unaffected entirely. There was a focused crease in her brow, and the strong bare arm that guided the hammer down unerringly was coated in a thin sheen of sweat, and not of the kind Buck had been stinking up his sheets with when he awoke that morn.
Blessedly, the moment he stepped inside was the moment Hen moved her work from the anvil back into the forge, and the pump of the bellows instead of the high ring of steel combined with the dark of the smithy was as sweet as featherdown to his frayed senses. He watched her work for a moment or two, marvelling at the way the flames were coaxed from coals and produced enough heat to turn simple iron bright as daybreak. It sent spots dancing across his vision when he finally looked away, at her.
"Chim mentioned that you knew the Phoenix Knight as well," he said in lieu of greeting to announce his presence.
Hen's hand stilled on the bellows. She gripped the steel in the fire, turned it this way and that, and then laid it aside. It was only then that she turned to face him fully, crossing arms across the soot-stained leather of her apron. "And you have heard one too many minstrel's tales," she replied drily, a singular eyebrow raised. She looked, in that very moment, as some patron saint of unimpressed blacksmiths. Then her lips quirked upwards. "Yes, I knew Tommy."
Buck rolled his eyes, mouthing the name after her. It was hard to think of a knight of legend as a Tommy, especially one as drenched in mystery and infamy as the Phoenix Knight. He was of a mind to tell Hen that but reined in the urge. He had questions, and she would not answer them if he kept her from her work too long with unnecessary - albeit not ungrounded - retort.
He deserved some kind of praise for his restraint, he thought.
"Do you think he will agree to teach me?" he asked instead, glancing backwards to see if there was any surface for him to lean on that would not leave him soot-streaked as well. There was not, but his hose were dark enough that perhaps it would not show too much, and so he leaned.
