Hell, I'm late to wish you a happy Valentine's day, but, well, it's never too late to wish you love, warmth, support, and PEACE!

Being honest, I'm rather indifferent to this holiday. I mainly take it as a good reason to draw couples from the cast of my projects characters, if I find time. And I found some time recently, so have this thingie featuring my boys Sergio and Freddie ;__; ❤

This drawing turned out to be rather problematic. The conceived angle hasn't come out very well, which is why the guys' anatomy looks wrong to me.
Sometimes I manage to divert attention from the broken anatomy with the use of some intricate palette or composition, but not this time, because neither can be noticed in this piece :'))
Speaking of the background, I didn't manage to find time to do it at all, while it was supposed to be detailed in fact: I spent too much time trying to figure out how the guys' bodies should look compared to each other in this particular composition, considering the most recent changes in their designs, according to which Freddie became tall, broad-shouldered and athletic, proving that he was a rat, while Sergio the garden dormouse almost didn't change, not counting that his legs became a little shorter and he himself became slightly denser, and that just compared to the new Freddie he started to look tiny.
/I had tried to illustrate their new body shapes just once before, to be honest. Here's that sketch if you're interested, but keep in mind that in case of Sergio it isn't the final ref: https://sta.sh/0g2w8nv1o5v. Surely that was why this time drawing the close contact between them turned out to be a problem. The damn lack of practice./

The illustration relates to an episode from my project Legend of the Wings. It was supposed to look somewhat dramatic, but rather cozy, since its essence wasn't about sympathy or regret [about the happened to Freddie's arm], it was about love and support, about overcoming the crisis together. However, in fact the picture turned out... just dramatic. Even uncomfortable. And that makes me sad. Maybe in the future, when I don't have to be torn between a bunch of things to do, and when I don't have to sacrifice my sleep to draw something for myself, I'll draw a second version of this thing showing what's been in my mind in fact.

This artwork also has some pros to mention. First of all, I have decided what kind of clothes Sergio should be wearing. I've also tried to draw him with the 'guitarist's manicure', as he's a musician fond of his guitar and I find this small detail very suitable for him. Not sure that the specific bevel has turned out clear enough, but at least his claws don’t look standard to me.

Secondly, it's clear that I rarely find time or motivation to work on my projects today, so finding some of the both to draw a thing related to the plot of LotW and to my current favorite love couple was pleasant, even exciting to some extent. Even though drawing Freddie's missing limb was a spoiler thing, and I actually had taken the decision of avoiding spoiling the plots in any way.
Oh well. My projects are frozen, I don't think that the near future I'll be ready to return to working on them, so I'd like to let myself draw whatever I want and be happy with what I have.

The last thing to mention is that this piece is fully digital. I'm honestly surprised with the quality of the linework. I didn't only manage to make it look rather similar to my usual ink lines, but also didn't notice anything atypical for my usual drawing style in general.
Hell, I like hearing that my latest digital attempts are very similar to my traditional works. So curious how far I can go in trying to imitate traditional in digital, lmao.
Hope that someday it will take me much less time. Currently drawing from scratch in digital takes me thrice more time than it does in traditional, and my back totally hates this xP

P.S. Ah yeah, predicting questions about Freddie's arm.
Freddie was wounded in a shootout, his left arm was badly damaged. Both soft tissue and bone were affected. Soon an infection added, which resulted in inflammation and swelling and eventually led to gangrene. Saving the arm wasn't possible. Saving Freddie himself became necessary, but it meant that half of his arm had to be amputated, as soon as possible. Otherwise he would have died of sepsis in a matter of days.