CHIVEE

wake up babe the muse said we're painting gabriel's wings as described in 21ge with the resolution cranked up to max today

I've wanted to paint this ever since I read ch 3! the imagery was so lovely that it remains one of my favorite scenes. "but miyeyu, hasn't it been, like, months since you started waterboarding the poor ultrakill community with 21ge fanart?" YES. and it has taken me months to work up the courage to finally do this justice...

at this point I thought it would be weird to not do the whole wingspan, so I got a second opinion and the answer was yes! so now this piece is ridiculously wide: 8000 x 3000, about 4 computer monitors wide! it's a bit overkill, isn't it... but I hate downsizing. when I expanded the canvas, Procreate actually took multiple seconds to do it, which has NEVER happened before. I'm gonna be honest with you, it scared me a little.

did I copy/paste the left wing to make the right one? other than the base color, no. this is because I am a masochist and I enjoy pain

I think it looks much better with the whole wingspan! what do you think?

the feathers become more opaque toward the base of the wing. it does have a dim sky-blue glow that's best seen in darkness, but it does not illuminate the area unless gabriel wills it. in bright light, just like a light-up gadget, the glow is much less obvious and the whole wing appears a very pale blue - not to mention how it refracts light like in V1's description.

most depictions of gabriel show his wings as made of flat light, just like the game, but I'd really like to see more versions of him with realistic glowing feathered wings! it was an interesting challenge for sure. this was only made possible with the help of an entire Pinterest board worth of references - mainly for rendering the wings, of course, but also for wing anatomy (not something I do often) and composition. the most useful refs, I'll put here:

anyways I could probably spend another handful of hours refining the rendering, but I think this is a good stopping point. also I have no title for this piece, but you can call it "Shrimp Colors" if you want uwu

Fully inspired and referenced from these three pictures taken and posted on Instagram by Satu Liljeqvist.