I was asked to create the announcement art for day seven of #Valkyrie10, an artistic celebration in early March that counted down to Valkyrie’s tenth anniversary. This was my piece!
I anticipate the compression being especially unkind to this one, so take a few crops…
I was assigned “Shu or Mika’s Childhood” as my prompt. The mods were kind enough to approve me drawing a fantasy scene. The two little ones, with Shu in one of her favorite dresses and Mika being given a spare, are off to a doll tea party in Shu’s garden. Mademoiselle attends in an outfit matching Shu’s, alongside miscellaneous little ladies. Consider it a glimpse into a world where the two were able to meet again consistently, or under different circumstances.
They were both lonely children, in their own way. Here, Shu is excited to have made a friend who goes along with her whims without any judgment. Mika himself is excited to be with Shu at all, though a bit nervous.
When picking their dresses, I made Mika’s simpler with the idea that he might be given one Shu worked on herself. I have always liked to imagine that the dress Shu gave him in their canon meeting was her own work (or work-in-progress, explaining why she may have had a spare on hand). Mika’s bare, bandaged legs and dirty shoes are supposed to give the feeling that Shu just sort of tossed the dress over his day clothes in a moment of inspiration. The tattered teddy is his own, and will be given a seat at the table just like the dolls. Of course!
...All of this was my intent, but you may look at it however you’d like, so long as you view it with your HEART.
It’s honestly a little unusual for me to avoid a very easy opportunity to draw something a little grim, but this was the first idea I had, and it stuck with me so severely that I had to see it through. I am extremely inexperienced with drawing scenes like this, so I was scrambling up until the last minute of the deadline. I wish I could have done the background properly, or cleaned it up more, but the stars aligned differently.
