Gotten that out rather late than I should've, but you know the useful old saying, "better late than never".

I was anticipating on making a "special drawing" for the Valentines Day, but due to me investing time working on other stuff like the guide, I ended up making sketches much more later that initially thought. Even ended rotating between them while panick mode has set in. And the colouring was started today. (although I manage to make another that I like enough to make an another illustration, buuuut for another time)

That whole "chalky" shading was specifically chosen since I wanted to go for a more "gritty street" feel as the background (makes sense given these two being the focus here, but also out of necessity, I do typically find myself visiting these places and aren't too far away from our apartment). Softer shading would've still worked, but wouldn't flow as well with graffiti ridden wall having that greyish tone this time. The G-Pen did pretty neat in tying up that feel even though I rarely use it nowadays.

Speaking of which, the graffitis were admittedly hard to make mostly because I had to think these up myself. Tried to challenge myself on using no references again... okay, technically the least amount of references due to the presence of the electrocardiograms (go figue), writing the lines in their fictitious foreign language as well as using their outfits seen in the official Grandfest poster (the one where they have their casual outfits and not the actual ones... except Deep Cut which makes sense given their team).

As for why it doesn't look much like your typical "gifting someone with flowers or chocolate" or "doing the usual parody on that" drawing, I just simply wanted to shake things up with the way these two spend their time together for this occasion. I like to think that they take a more personal celebration here for two reasons. First, music is the sole reason (there are many, but music is it) that bonded them, so might as well incorporate that. And subtlety (or at least going with ease) kind of matters to me. You can come up with pretty creative ways of tackling this kind of stuff without making a direct approach and people would still pick up on the hints you left in. That's one thing that I've learned throughout the years after learning the writing process behind certain pieces of media and come to appreciate them even more.

But enough with all that-

Happy love day you filthy doves!

Give out some comments here if you want to talk about it or even fave it if you like it.

Splatoon belongs to Nintendo.

This artwork is made by me.