PIC, PIC, PIC!! (Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles)
Okay, it's that time of the year again. So here's my entry for this year's Kurofai Olympics. The theme this edition was the Tarot (immensely fascinating topic for me) and my prompt was "The Hanged Man". So, here it is (with an ass-long explanation, although I actually tried not to ramble too much).
Okay, first the pic, then the first batch of explanations, then the reversed pic and the close-ups.
I could spend hours talking about this, but the abridged version is that "The Hanged Man" can mean sacrifice, passivity/withholding action, the inability to help oneself through independent action, acceptance... and in reverse, it can suggest that your sacrifice is actually useless and the card can be seen as a nudge in the opposite direction of self-denial. The Wikipedia also mentions that there's a relation to treason because traitors used to be hanged that way, upside down. All of this screamed "Fai" to me.
Fai is a deeply fascinating character because he's not a typical... anything. A hero, a villain, a victim, a badass mofo... he's all of that and none of it. He claims he wants to be taken away somewhere but he's shockingly willful at times. He both flees from and runs towards emotional pain and charges into battle all the time even if it's obvious he hates hurting people. So I wanted to reflect all of this in an ambiguous representation of the card. That means that the upright position of the card is actually the reverse one because you never know what's going on with Fai. So he could be hanging from the roots of the tree or hanging from the branches. The truth is that his vampire pose is a farce, it's just the strings of the pupeteer pulling him down/up towards the ground where Fei Wong Reed's hands are hidden. All of this while Ginryuu (symbolizing Kurogane), with the help of the cherry flowers (symbolizing Sakura) are holding to him for dear life and keeping him close to the branches of the tree, the safe place, not letting go. I wanted to also include Syaoran as a wolf hidden in the tree, unfortunately trapped and closer to FeiWong Reed than he would like.
And then there's the reversed version (of the reversed version):
Where the meanings can be a bit clearer.
And, well, if only because it's taken me ages to do this and I still haven't been able to convey the shine of the metallic inks (that's tragic, but it's very hard to take good pics of that because the angle needs to be too steep for the image to still be in focus in its entirety and then one has to correct the perspective and it's hell) here's a couple or close-ups. Also, I spent unnumbered hours with this and I want my efforts to be appreciated, dammit.
Other technical difficulties include the size being too small not to blotch the details with the ink and pastels. I swear Fai's hair was fluffy and Ginryuu had a face in pencil, but even with my finest brush I couldn't mantain that because metallic inks are thick and flowing strokes are impossible when they are measured in millimiters.
(If the pics are actually too big and it destroys the layout, please, do let me know.)
Infinity aesthetics are the best.
Dragons are rather flexible in this universe.
And that's it. Hope you like it!
Okay, first the pic, then the first batch of explanations, then the reversed pic and the close-ups.
I could spend hours talking about this, but the abridged version is that "The Hanged Man" can mean sacrifice, passivity/withholding action, the inability to help oneself through independent action, acceptance... and in reverse, it can suggest that your sacrifice is actually useless and the card can be seen as a nudge in the opposite direction of self-denial. The Wikipedia also mentions that there's a relation to treason because traitors used to be hanged that way, upside down. All of this screamed "Fai" to me.
Fai is a deeply fascinating character because he's not a typical... anything. A hero, a villain, a victim, a badass mofo... he's all of that and none of it. He claims he wants to be taken away somewhere but he's shockingly willful at times. He both flees from and runs towards emotional pain and charges into battle all the time even if it's obvious he hates hurting people. So I wanted to reflect all of this in an ambiguous representation of the card. That means that the upright position of the card is actually the reverse one because you never know what's going on with Fai. So he could be hanging from the roots of the tree or hanging from the branches. The truth is that his vampire pose is a farce, it's just the strings of the pupeteer pulling him down/up towards the ground where Fei Wong Reed's hands are hidden. All of this while Ginryuu (symbolizing Kurogane), with the help of the cherry flowers (symbolizing Sakura) are holding to him for dear life and keeping him close to the branches of the tree, the safe place, not letting go. I wanted to also include Syaoran as a wolf hidden in the tree, unfortunately trapped and closer to FeiWong Reed than he would like.
And then there's the reversed version (of the reversed version):
Where the meanings can be a bit clearer.
And, well, if only because it's taken me ages to do this and I still haven't been able to convey the shine of the metallic inks (that's tragic, but it's very hard to take good pics of that because the angle needs to be too steep for the image to still be in focus in its entirety and then one has to correct the perspective and it's hell) here's a couple or close-ups. Also, I spent unnumbered hours with this and I want my efforts to be appreciated, dammit.
Other technical difficulties include the size being too small not to blotch the details with the ink and pastels. I swear Fai's hair was fluffy and Ginryuu had a face in pencil, but even with my finest brush I couldn't mantain that because metallic inks are thick and flowing strokes are impossible when they are measured in millimiters.
(If the pics are actually too big and it destroys the layout, please, do let me know.)
Infinity aesthetics are the best.
Dragons are rather flexible in this universe.
And that's it. Hope you like it!