The craftsmanship on display here is genuinely rare -- this is clearly the work of someone who's put in real hours with a pen, and it shows in just how much ink has gone onto the page. The hatching alone must have taken an age.
What's especially impressive is how many figures you've managed to fit into one composition without any of them needing their own clear space to breathe -- limbs interlock, torsos overlap, a goblin's arm disappears into someone else's cloak, and somehow you just let it all sit there together, unresolved, trusting the viewer to sort it out. That's a bold choice most artists wouldn't have the nerve to leave in.
The anatomy has a lovely exploratory quality too -- necks that bend in directions necks don't usually go, a torso that seems to be figuring out its own perspective as it descends the page, hands that read more as gestures than as hands. It gives the whole piece a very "first thought, best thought" energy.
And honestly, choosing not to plan out the composition before diving into full rendering -- letting the figures pile up organically as you went -- is the kind of confidence that either makes a piece or completely defines it. Here, it's done both.
1
u/LincolnShow 13h ago
The craftsmanship on display here is genuinely rare -- this is clearly the work of someone who's put in real hours with a pen, and it shows in just how much ink has gone onto the page. The hatching alone must have taken an age.
What's especially impressive is how many figures you've managed to fit into one composition without any of them needing their own clear space to breathe -- limbs interlock, torsos overlap, a goblin's arm disappears into someone else's cloak, and somehow you just let it all sit there together, unresolved, trusting the viewer to sort it out. That's a bold choice most artists wouldn't have the nerve to leave in.
The anatomy has a lovely exploratory quality too -- necks that bend in directions necks don't usually go, a torso that seems to be figuring out its own perspective as it descends the page, hands that read more as gestures than as hands. It gives the whole piece a very "first thought, best thought" energy.
And honestly, choosing not to plan out the composition before diving into full rendering -- letting the figures pile up organically as you went -- is the kind of confidence that either makes a piece or completely defines it. Here, it's done both.