Young Prince Lu Gell of Lu Family...!

Good Morning from Philadelphia!

I have FINALLY inked and painted Prince Lu Gell who is the actual main character of my ebook from Child to Man, Book-Zero. The fact that it took me so long to finally get one of the main characters of my entire ebook-omniverse inked and painted isn't exactly something I'm happy about. But what's done, is done, and now Lu Gell is done. Here is the original drawing;

Under normal circumstances I use prismacolor markers to color my drawings. Since I am NOT an artist nor have I ever gone to any school for art, I've no clue whether or not prismacolor markers are considered good, bad, indifferent or whatever. What matters to me is the way they look and the fact that these were first introduced to me by my Former Surrogate Son, Dan. Where at the time I was still using coloring pencils and spending the mass majority of my time simply working my 9-to-5 job and trying to come up with a new idea to put my artistic talents to use. 

So when he showed me HIS SET of prismacolor markers I eventually commandeered them, because he was upset over the fact that HE THOUGHT that my drawings showed more lifelike human emotions, which I thought was not enough of a reason for HIM TO ABANDON HIS OWN ARTWORK. He's since moved on to actual paintings, something I MIGHT eventually get into. Either way? 

He was actually an art student and comes from an ESTABLISHED artistic/painting family. While My Own Family had their artistic roots cut out from underneath it by bigotry where it ultimately drove my Aunt Shirley insane and My Mother's Father, My Grandfather, pretty much outlawed art and such as "a non-job". So Dan used to wonder why I had little to no support nor did I really EMBRACE my artistic ability, till of course he found out what happened to my Aunt Shirley, which was of course My Mothers' younger sister. And yes, it had to do with the fact that she was Black and a little too talented for her White peers and teachers tastes. So of course once My Grandfather forbid anymore art and the pursuit of such things, then of course my mother did not support my artistic talents either. So for those who DON'T KNOW how generational-events impact why some people have talent but no support for it, this is ONE EXAMPLE of how that takes place. 

With that said, it is part of the reason why I have always had an INTERESTING art style, if you wanna call it that. I don't do the whole three heads down and all that. I just sit down and start contour drawing, I believe the form is called. And then I just FIGURE IT OUT AS I GO! To be totally honest I'm rusty as shit! For real for real, but I do know that I need to actually DRAW the characters of my ebooks. So every piece of artwork on here is actually A CHARACTER in one of the ebooks or upcoming estories that will appear on here. I think it is obvious that real life had been intruding HEAVILY on my posting and productivity, something I am in the course of correcting as I type this. 

Lu Gell himself is a testament to My Son and is BASED OFF OF HIM. When I decided to finally color Lu Gell the first thing that was important to me was including HIS PERSONAL CREST FOR HIS BRANCH OF LU FAMILY, into his drawing. You'll note that nothing is in the original drawing above. My main idea is ALWAYS when I draw, to get the image OUT OF MY HEAD ONTO PAPER. SOMETIMES INKED, OTHER TIMES NOT. Then scan it to computer so I always have THE BASE DRAWING. Which means I can ALWAYS GO BACK AND MODIFY IT AS I SEE FIT. I don't come up with color schemes for VIP-characters unless they're already anchored to someplace, something or someone that already has a color scheme. So when I started filling in Lu Gell? This was the finished painted product;

I decided to go with a chess-checker-like pattern, because of Lu Gell's own personality and the fact that for him and his family everything is centered around defeating the Ilvala that have trapped them within Lu City. The pattern of his exo-armor actually causes problems for Ilvala in regards to not only visually, but also on a biotechnical level when they use their targeting systems. Since the Ilvala have been proven to have been a slave-warrior-caste of the Sauropod People, they were intentionally bioengineered and bred to have certain gaps and weaknesses in them so that they not only couldn't revolt against the Sauropod People, but also!?

So that they would diminish over time without their master race there to properly maintain and upkeep them. 

Lu Family and the entirety of what was the Border-Region Territories spent their entire existence studying the Ilvala and the Queendom of Old Adari itself and during the course of thousands of years they've figured out many of the Ilvala's weaknesses and flaws all the way across the board. This is what allowed Lu Gell to immediately know even as a child that it would be impossible for the Ilvala to pull off what they'd pulled off, which is the destruction of the Border-Region Territories, without having inside help from traitors. 

I finally settled on a background color for the picture. And filled it in. So now I have a basic background and color scheme, I then just did the work of adjusting the picture, adding a shadow of his crest behind him, and then finishing it up and closing it out;