HOME | DD

Description
Oh my gosh, I finally finished it! It only took, like, a month and a half! I know that's slow, even for me, and I really wasn't expecting it to take nearly that long, but then I realized that I've never drawn Mai before, never drawn Zuko in armor before, never drawn him bald or head on before, and that in order to make sense it needed some form of background, which I almost never do, so I had issues with perspective and whatnot (and eventually wound up deleting/ erasing much of the background). Oy. But it's finished! Yeay!

So anyway, this is "Fire Nation Gothic," my first ever Maiko pic, which I did as a gift for , although I cannot remember what the occasion was (especially since I don't really ship Maiko, but oh well). Once again, it was sketched by hand and colored in photoshop (with about 50 layers). If you can't tell it's done as a semi-parody of American Gothic (though if you can't tell that from either the title, the pose, or both, then I have failed miserably and I must go curl up in a ball and weep ), and I did it that way because when I was trying to decide what kind of pose to do for a Maiko pic, I couldn't think of any really shippy kinds of poses that really seemed....*them.* To me, even as a ship they just don't seem all that romantic. I mean, they may love each other, but there's a difference between love an romance and they just don't seem very romantic to me (and there's nothing wrong with that. Some couples are just more reserved than others and that's fine). So I was thinking about the characters, and about the ship, and all of a sudden "American Gothic" came to me and it seemed perfect, so I decided to use it for Maiko even though it required a background, since the painting has a farmhouse in the background.

I tried to keep it as close as I could to the actual painting, although I couldn't do a farmhouse, since they would never live in a farm house, so instead it's the entrance of a random Fire Nation building (which I decided is very large and rather far away, which is why you can't see any door, which is one of the things I had to erase because it was screwing with the perspective too much). And Zuko has a sword because it was the only think I could think of to have him holding that was even remotely similar to a pitchfork and that he would actually have (a spear would have been better, but Zuzu doesn't use spears, so that wasn't really an option).

So anyway, to finish with my babbling and shut up, I hope that I did a good enough job with it and that you guys like it (especially , for whom I made it) and that it's shippy enough for the Maiko shippers, even though it's not a mushy kind of ship.

Edit: Also, I have just now realized that I forgot to to the shading on Zuko's hand, so now it looks weirdly flat, but oh well, I don't really feel like going back and fixing it right now.

Description
Oh my gosh, I finally finished it! It only took, like, a month and a half! I know that's slow, even for me, and I really wasn't expecting it to take nearly that long, but then I realized that I've never drawn Mai before, never drawn Zuko in armor before, never drawn him bald or head on before, and that in order to make sense it needed some form of background, which I almost never do, so I had issues with perspective and whatnot (and eventually wound up deleting/ erasing much of the background). Oy. But it's finished! Yeay!

So anyway, this is "Fire Nation Gothic," my first ever Maiko pic, which I did as a gift for , although I cannot remember what the occasion was (especially since I don't really ship Maiko, but oh well). Once again, it was sketched by hand and colored in photoshop (with about 50 layers). If you can't tell it's done as a semi-parody of American Gothic (though if you can't tell that from either the title, the pose, or both, then I have failed miserably and I must go curl up in a ball and weep ), and I did it that way because when I was trying to decide what kind of pose to do for a Maiko pic, I couldn't think of any really shippy kinds of poses that really seemed....*them.* To me, even as a ship they just don't seem all that romantic. I mean, they may love each other, but there's a difference between love an romance and they just don't seem very romantic to me (and there's nothing wrong with that. Some couples are just more reserved than others and that's fine). So I was thinking about the characters, and about the ship, and all of a sudden "American Gothic" came to me and it seemed perfect, so I decided to use it for Maiko even though it required a background, since the painting has a farmhouse in the background.

I tried to keep it as close as I could to the actual painting, although I couldn't do a farmhouse, since they would never live in a farm house, so instead it's the entrance of a random Fire Nation building (which I decided is very large and rather far away, which is why you can't see any door, which is one of the things I had to erase because it was screwing with the perspective too much). And Zuko has a sword because it was the only think I could think of to have him holding that was even remotely similar to a pitchfork and that he would actually have (a spear would have been better, but Zuzu doesn't use spears, so that wasn't really an option).

So anyway, to finish with my babbling and shut up, I hope that I did a good enough job with it and that you guys like it (especially , for whom I made it) and that it's shippy enough for the Maiko shippers, even though it's not a mushy kind of ship.

Edit: Also, I have just now realized that I forgot to to the shading on Zuko's hand, so now it looks weirdly flat, but oh well, I don't really feel like going back and fixing it right now.