Gideon the Ninth

New artwork! This is an illustration project I took on to expand my character art portfolio. I would really like to be illustrating book covers or MTG cards. I hope you see how title & author credits could fit at the top or bottom of this illustration.

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So, I started this one early 2020. I think I posted about it once when I was doing project polls? I've been scribbling it on and off in odd places, like I ended up drawing a lot of it at the Otakuthon here when we had the Umami table.

Because of that, there's a lot of technical things all over the place...like I rapidly improved on my line art that year, so I had to frustratingly resolve this artwork with an old lineart method. That's one big reason not to leave projects too long in The Pile. I struggled to finish this, too, because I couldn't figure out how to do such complex lighting digitally.

Only WIP I seem to have saved. I got pretty overwhelmed with the lighting immediately.

The Book

This is Gideon from the Ninth House in the necromantic space-warrior book series by Tamsyn Muir. There are 9 castes, the 9th being the lowest - as you may have guessed. This is the first book I read where the character is a lesbian, instead of constantly virtue signalling about being a lesbian. She looks at girl smut, she checks women out, she has some firey tension with her female boss that's very well described -- as in, I've rarely read the mystery of F/F attraction realistically portrayed. The world building is very detailed and nuanced, so are all the character dynamics. At first I couldn't get into it because that detail got in the way, but once the story gets going -- the sword fighting is amazingly written. Oh, and this book is definitely written for either smart, mature YA or adults. It doesn't read like a kids fantasy book.

Art Rant

I might draw more from this series or not, who knows! For now, here's a main character illustration. She is described as a muscular woman in the book, with great emphasis on how much work she has to put into her arms to wield a sword as well as she does. My biggest pet peeve with muscular women in art is how they tend to just look like a dude... women's muscles and skeleton are different, the muscles develop differently as you put them on.

Speaking in general with considerations around gender:

• Women have more lean, endurance-based muscle instead of large, fast-reacting muscle like men.

• Women have a larger pelvic girdle and generally more body fat to cover muscle definition. Being a muscular woman does not = a sudden complete change in skeletal structure into a V form. It's very hard to be chiselled, as well.

• There is a variety of forms; look at gymnasts, swimmers, climbers, and then considering bodybuilders who don't use steroids.

It's ironically quite sexist for artists to imagine a muscular woman and essentially draw Arnold Schwartzenegger with a female head tacked on. I find that quite funny considering the rage of portraying women with huge tits & ass, which is actually more realistic & attainable than the Arnold body.