Lucian Redraw (Patreon)

I like redrawing things to see how my sense of style differs over time. This was something I had a bit of an itch to do because Lucian's flip-flopped a bit in his design and what better way to see the progression than by adding to the growing train of redraws of his first sketch! I'm a lot happier with how he looks now. I don't know if this makes sense, but he feels more like what he was meant to be haha

On reflection, it's likely due to the fact I've become explicitly upfront with him being genderfluid. I had a lot of apprehension about having an openly trans character going through that revelation within a story, but not in a particularly binary or clean way. It hits a little too close to home for me and, as a result, makes any judgment difficult to separate from myself. He is not me, nor is his own particular gender expression my own, but it still contains facets of me I am still private about. There is liberation in finding the words that fit your identity, but there's also something uniquely confining when you realize people still expect you to fit into a particular mold. Doubly so when that mold is defined by western whiteness. Western raised I may be, but I'm still a child of Chinese immigrants and there is a disconnect I worry I will never be able to bridge. Though Lucian was not a child of direct immigrants, his paternal grandfather was Mexican and moved to America. His connection to that side is tenuous and sorely lacking. He feels a yearning for it more now that he's dead and in a new world. Maybe it's because the white side of his family didn't offer up much of a profound sense of identity he'd like to participate in, so he's falling back on the side he neglected (also definitely feeling wishful that he never got to take the time to learn about it more). It's mostly that he has a lot more positive memories associated with his dad and grandpa and really wants to stay connected to them in some way, even if he's now the only person in the world to know of their existence. But that's for the comic, or another post dedicated to this.

Anyways, enough self-interrogation and reflection, I did just draw this because I wanted to try to do another cunty Lucian portrait. It's honestly really hard to make a front-facing drawing look good. I struggle with it a LOT (3/4 gang rise up)