FanArt_ink.Swing

MTGinktober winds up into Day 8, "Swing," starring Mu Yanling, Sky Dancer and her Elemental Bird token!

This had to be one of the most last-minute changes I've ever done for a character selection. This was originally going to be Nahiri dual-wielding some swinging swords, but then I felt I really should do something in support of the Hearthstone guy who got banned and robbed of his earnings, and Hong Kong at large, especially after seeing that Joshua documentary recently. So I started pulling reference for Portal: Three Kingdoms characters, leaning towards Lady Zhurong, Warrior Queen, and then ultimately landing on Mu Yanling dual wielding umbrellas.

The umbrellas and Mu Yanling's flowing sleeves felt better for communicating "swing" anyway, rather than slicing swords or something, so that was an additional benefit of going with the planeswalker. And I say this was a last minute decision because I have a sort of soft deadline as to when I have to start "final" pencils in order to leave sufficient time to ink in order to hit deadline.

Fun Facts: The majority of the time, I'm sketching the construction of the composition and pose, and then our featured character's details get slapped on top of that figure relatively quickly, like costuming a mannequin, so that's why I had gone in thinking this was Nahiri, complete with all this reference material I collected ready to go, then scrambling to get stuff for Zhurong, and then Mu Yanling even after that. I was right up to the point where I had to start decorating my base pose or miss deadline, so it was quite a close call.

Easter Eggs: The Chinese character for peace, which appears to be the same as Japanese, just reversed, is spelled out in water.

Not normal,

Reuxben