Hand Study As An Excuse To Draw Mel

fffffaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAFAFAFAGAHGAGAGA WOOOOOOOOOOFFFFFFFFFFFFGGGJ a wip but stillll wooof woof woffffffffff 😈😈😈😈😈😈

WIP of two love birds that I think you guys will LOVE

If you get viscerally angry at literally any & every depiction of a character in which they're not faultless & above reproach, no matter how flattering said depiction ultimately is, then you cannot be mad when people decide to stop engaging with them altogether. People like to write & read about characters. Characters who are allowed to have an actual personality & character arc in which they grow & learn. Not perfect cardboard cutouts who never ever change.

"Maybe" 😠

Cutie patootie

I discovered the shift function on clip studio and now I'm powerful.

based off of this and inspired by @iskander-tm's lovely art of mel "sublimating her anger into art" hehe

I think the Arcane fanbase as a whole is very quick to clock Mel's manipulative tactics & condemn them without ever asking themselves why it is she acts that way. They either go 'problematic girlboss go queen' or 'what a horrible conniving bitch!' and move on, and it's been bugging me for a while.

Mel is the daughter of a Noxian Warmonger, raised in a 'might makes right' sort of environment that encourages violence as the means to settle conflict. The strong are always the winners, the losers must die. What made Mel such an outcast is primarily her resistance to such violence. Mel, at her very core, doesn't want to hurt people. We see this when she insists to her mother in that flashback to her childhood that they should spare that girl to "show the people that we are merciful," as she puts it.

To Mel, manipulation is the only way to avoid violence. Being too directly honest, not appealing to people, can be dangerous. It can lead to bloodshed. And if you look at things through her perspective in that sense, it's kind of obvious why she's constantly utilizing her cunning to get her way- because the only other way would actively put lives in danger. Mel's conniving nature is quite literally a coping mechanism that's followed her to Piltover, fortunately for her that makes her a very formidable politician.

she... oh I love women :')

Illustrations for chapter 8 and 9 of "how to save a crane (and other tragedies)"

Chapter 8 features Mel Medarda giving Jinx a very necessary makeover disguise, and Jayce and Vi having to deal with what should be the weirdest day of their lives but tragically isn't.

Chapter 9 features Viktor and the Hexcore trying to compromise on their own new look because things are going just a tad better for Viktor here, but not so much better that he isn't going through yet another traumatic metamorphosis. So it goes.

have Mel in her twenties! very roughly inspired by a rococo painting I saw a while back