Soulcaster

This is more fanart for Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. It is a wonderful book that you all should go out and read because of its sheer awesomeness.

My last fanart I did for this book was sent to my scraps section because it had issues. This one has issues, too, but not nearly as many and I was able to successfully shade it and such.

I was really scared that this pic would die in the shading process since the scene takes place in a dark alleyway in the middle of the night. It turned out alright, so I'm happy.

The scene is one of my favorites even though Shallan, the girl on the left, hasn't proven to be particularly useful to the plot yet and I don't really like her. (this is only a single book in a long series and Brandon Sanderson hasn't written any of the other books yet. Grr.) Anyway, I don't like Shallan. She's naiive and annoying. She also has this freak of nature "talent" where she can recreate any scene she's seen perfectly in her drawings. This is irritating to me because of all the hard work I put into my drawings and here she is not even paying attention to what she's doing and she instantly has this perfect picture. Anyway, so I don't like Shallan. Jasnah, the girl on the right, is amazingly awesome, though. So I like this scene because of her.

Anyway, so this is one of the many practical uses for channeling storm light. It hasn't been revealed in the series exactly how storm light can be channeled, but it's the basic magic system in the world. Soulcasting is similar to alchemy from FMA in that you can transform one element to another element. The elements are less science based and more magic based, though. In this case, Jasnah is transforming two thugs who attacked them into smoke. Shallan is staring at one of the thugs at one end of the alley while we can see the other thug. There's supposed to be a stone statue by Jasnah of a third thug, but that would have made this picture way too cluttered.

Drawing the guy turning into smoke was a pain. His pose was being stupid. That's the one part of this picture I really don't like.

Designing Shallan and Jasnah's dresses was fun. The only real description of the styles is that the dresses button up the sides and that the left sleeve is longer than the right one and buttoned shut. In this world it is inappropriate for women to show their left hands. Other than that, I could do pretty much whatever I wanted with their dresses. I like the way they turned out.

There's a lot more I could say about this picture, but this description is already way too long, so I'm going to end it here. Hope you like it!