#chekirii

A tribute piece to my king’s retirement! This is entitled Passing the Colors, and is one of my only pieces that has a name! The quote is from the Lion King - I had that line in my head the whole time I was painting this. This took me so long aaahh. I stayed off Lioden for 11 days to make sure I could post this on the same day Bedengii retired! My time management is so bad... Anyway, here’s my rambles on Lore and my thoughts on the making of the piece.

Lore:

This is my headcanon for how a King’s markings are passed to his heir in-universe. The November shamans summon the spirit of the fallen King, and he passes his pelt to his heir. The glowing incense surrounding them is inspired by a November encounter!

Bedengii was murdered in an argument with his lover Uongo, which devastated his adopted son Chekirii. Chekirii is the product of a lioness’s affair with a Ferus, and also has a Heartless personality. So he never felt like he’d be able to measure up to his adopted dad -  he’s not a naturally kind person, and doesn’t care about other people like Bedengii does. He only tries to be a good person because he wants to please his dad. To be given his father’s pelt is the ultimate confirmation that his father does love him and does believe in him.

My process:

I learned so much making this! I loved doing the background - there’s an entire night sky with hundreds of stars back there! You can only see a tiny snatch of it.

The glowy stuff is incense smoke from the shamans. Bedengii steps out of it when summoned and it follows him around. I decided to try color blocking it out, so I could make sure Bedengii’s white lineart would be easy to see, and I loved the color blocking so much that I decided to keep it!

I enjoyed doing the tears a lot too! I googled some tutorials and I think they turned out really well! Bedengii’s sparkles are nice too.

The transformation line I’m iffy on. I like it but I wanted it to be more glowy.