NEO-FUTURE

Dionysus from Hades, original design by Jen Zee.
He's the 2nd of my planned 3 Hades character design portraits and studies.

Filling a page of him in my sketchbook felt rewarding, getting back into trying to feel more active with creating something. I really struggled with the pose for him, I did want to include his sceptre/staff he has in his original art, but I couldn't make it work. Anything I tried I felt looked unadventurous, too familiar with the original.

The last sketch I did of him was of him doing the Prince Sidon smile. It was just for funsies, but I ended up liking that one best. 
My DD today is of the unfinished linework I did for him.

One thing I want to call myself out for: I don't know what it's called, but I notice there's a trend over the past few years of colouring characters with lighter colours where the shadows would be. It could be the bounce light, but it really looks good to me. I don't really know how to do it though, this is just me trying to recall what I think I've seen (never want to look up a reference when I'm doing it - I used to accidentally mimic what I saw when I would).

I'm thinking I'll remove his left arm for this pose when I work on it more. I don't feel like it works, and I don't like that he's off-centre. I want to look similar to what I did for Aphrodite, even though there's some perspective stuff going on that I don't think I can work into Dionysus unless I change a lot.