okay..... man this one is a big one... so be prepared for a hella long chapter.

so... remember how i mentioned that i was working on a larger piece in the previous chapter? yep, i finally finished it!

argh this one took me ages... but in the end i think it was very much worth it ^-^
not the happiest with the levels of saturation though, but alas.... can't create a perfect masterpiece every time you make an illustration... and if i may dare say so myself, i got pretty close this time around >w<"

anyways... what is all this about? you guys probably know that i love and play genshin impact, right? (btw... UID is 714408162 .... if you're on the europe server and wanna co-op, hmu! uwu)
now mihoyo (the company that created the game) are currently hosting a fan-art contest for xiao.

.... i know it's too late now, to encourage y'all to participate, but here are the contest details anyways, to just.... illustrate the scale of this thing o-o"

and since xiao was the reason i started to play this game, his weapon is the only 5* weapon i have (RIP), he is my absolutely favourite character (bennett is a close second tho) and i am a loyal xiao-main, having him in my team literally always.... except when i gotta fight anemo specters -_-" ....

i mean..... i couldn't not do something for it, right????

so in the end, i went ahead and noted down what i wanted to include. i wanted to depict him as a protector. a guardian with demonic appearance. a looming shadow, guarding liyue from the remnants of fallen gods.

i also wanted to include some hints to his past, and the mythological and cultural aspects that inspired the character in the first place.

rather quickly i formed a game plan and started by taking a screenshot of the area, i wanted to represent in my background.

i wanted to have the area around wangshu inn in here, whilst also getting some morning/evening mist in there, showing the mythical beauty of dihua marsh.

taking that as my base, i then continued by creating some brushes in krita, that mimic the flow and texture of ink brushes, to create a background in greyscale, inspired by chinese ink paintings, but with a bloody red tinting everything and making the ink bleed in parts.

i really wanted to get a moody feel in there, with strong blacks and reds, with a lot of texture and wispy edges, later on enhancing the effect with a yellow-toned parchment texture.

it took quite some time, but i arrived here at some point >w<
the background wasn't meant to be properly refined, which is why i allowed myself to work a bit messy, since the characters would be covering most of it either way.... in the end, barely anything of this background is visible at all, but hey.... sometimes sacrifices must be made T-T

after i finished the background, i started to work on the characters.

generally speaking, i didn't want to portray xiao as a pretty, tsundere demon-hunter, or a mean looking warrior, which is how most pieces of xiao seem to show him as. i wanted to really emphasize the fact, that he is not human.

xiao is a yaksha. an nature spirit in buddhist and hinduist mythology that either reside in trees and mountains, guarding treasures, or have more a more demonic side to them, taunting travelers, that dare to enter their territory.
in addition to that, they are either connected to the god of wealth, are warriors to the evil deities in this world, or are counted as followers of bishamon, the guardian of the north and god of luck.

overall, we can see all of this reflected in xiao. he used to be controlled by an evil god, before morax (god of contracts and wealth) freed him of his suffering and giving him the name xiao. xiao has ever since been under morax' command, and since morax is the archon god of liyue (the nation inspired mainly by china) xiao follows him and protects the people from those demonic appearances of the past.

in general, xiao combines the entire east-asian mythology of the yakshas into one storyline, and i tried my very best to explore that history and culture, before implementing parts of it into the illustration.

either way, after reaching friendship level 5 on xiao, we unlock character story 4. and this is very interesting to me, since it ends with the following lines:

"And yet, Xiao does not feel any hatred. Having lived for over two thousand years, no single karmic debt constitutes anything more than a fleeting memory.
No grudge can last a thousand years, nor is any debt so great that it cannot be paid off in this time.
Xiao has spent many long years alone.
But his battles have never been in vain.
Because ultimately, the one with whom Xiao wrestles is himself."

and... well.... i just.... had to visualize that last line..... so i decided to quite literally portray him fighting himself :D

when looking at the dev logs and colour concepts of xiao, the following two were shown to the public, the one on the right becoming the final design:

and i just... since i already was going for the whole blood-theme with the background, i decided to give the two distinct appearance and outfit changes.
our "good" xiao is just his usual self with some strong lighting, bringing his contrast into the piece with the bright turquoise. "evil" xiao would be more of an illusion. being an entity of black smoke and whisps, since those are the elements that xiao has around him, whenever he puts on his mask. i thus, also wanted to not only draw him wearing the other outfit, but also wearing the mask.

at first i decided to go with the signature colour of our conqueror of demons, before going back and editing the colours to be as red as the background, whilst also making the background seem generally more moody and atmospheric, sadly starting to cover most of the work i put into the background.
i added some red glitchy effects, to also enhance the ghostly nature of "evil" xiao.

when it then came to our normal version of him.... things took a few turns.

in his character trailer we see him struggling with his karma, symbolized by black and red strings that hold him captive, bind him to perpetual agony and pain, to punish him for eons of slaughter.

https://youtu.be/sjozpa9DsZU

so instead of him fighting only against his shadow-self, i decided to include those karmic binds as well, stopping him from unleashing his full potential to fight back.

this is also where i finally got around to try file layers.... essentially you can import a krita document as a layer into another krita document. so you can essentially work on one element in your piece in a seperate document, with all the changes instantly being visible in the other document... that's also why he is cut off awkwardly in the next WIP >w<"

now... after finishing up "good" xiao, adding the karmic binds again and making the whole construct on the right match up with the background, i theoretically called the piece "done"... but something felt off and was missing.

knowing how i most certainly would find the solution to my problem with fresh eyes...

i worked almost daily for 4-7 hours on this, from the 28. of december to the finishing date of the 09. january >w<"
so yeah.... at some point i got so used to the mistakes and appearance of the piece, that i was rendered unable to continue to work on it

so after putting the piece down, asking friends for some critique during my down-time and not looking at it for an entire day, i came back rejuveniled and ready to fix up the still messy illustration i was standing in front of.

i finally went around to make our red xiao more detailed, giving him more shape, whilst also making him the one in control of blue xiaos binds.
i also added quite a bit of contrast in there, making the mountains in the background more noticeable, carving out the details in clothing with highlights, before moving on to the other xiao.

he looked dull, compared to everything else around him, and whilst it did indeed pull a nice contrast, it just didn't sit right with me.
so i scrapped my initial ideas, zoomed out as far as krita would allow me to and think about the flow, composition, values, tones and colour temperatures, and just feeling into the read of the piece.

and after thinking for a whole while, i decided to go all out in contrast. on the left we have black and red, a dynamic pose, flowing elements, and generally not too much contrast.
so on the right i decided to keep most things rather angular. the karmic binds where straight lines, the rather tense pose also made that corner look more tense and stiff. and since there wasn't much contrast, i decided to make several details glow. the spear anyways, since that's canon in the game, but also most crystals in his clothing and most importantly: his eyes.

in the game, xiao has amber eyes with a piercing gaze, and turquoise glowing eyes on his mask. now... i decided to swap them around... more or less. the mask in this drawing has black holes with black liquid flowing out. they may be tears, may be blood.... maybe they are tears of blood. idk... but it looked cool and made him look more demonic and creepy.
whilst on the other side, we have strong, glowing eyes, matching with the spear and some background details i added, making him appear stronger and magical, than before.

i thought this piece to be done yet again. set it aside, showed the WIP to friends again, asked for critique and feedback from their perspective... and oh good lord, what would i have done without them T-T

so after another day break, i went back. imported the file into a new file as a file layer, so i wouldn't edit anything i already had and had an overall smaller document, and continued to work on the piece.

generally i still had to work on the following aspects:
- the feet on the right look like they are at the same height, even though they should have some height variation due to perspective
- his (for us) right arm has too low contrast with the background, making quite some think that he only has one of those in the first place ^-^"
- xiao on the left blends too well into the background. i wanted him to blend in, but i went to far, ending up in an imbalance
- the legs are a different length on our shadow demon boii and his (for us) left arm is bent rather unnaturally, since i kinda fucked up to make the rotation of the upper torso read the way it should
- the heads are tilted a bit too relaxed. especially on out xiao on the right... i missed out on quite the added tension over there
- the knees on right xiao weren't bent quite enough, even though i ended up just keeping the one leg straight, since it showed his "helplessness" against the karmic binds better >w<
- our left xiao doesn't read as much as a ghostly entity as i'd like to, so i should define the shapes better, and add more light values
- the two are on a similar level and are of a similar size, making ghost xiao look less dynamic, and more... weird?

.... thanks a ton again to odango (odango.a.tama on instagram), rolie polie (biban.art on insta) and tsuba (tsubasa_no_basho on insta) for helping me out there... def go check them out, they are all amazing artists QwQ

either way, i continued to work on those points, generally bringing more contrast into this piece in general, and more detail, through using my lineart-brush as the main utensil at this stage. i put a stronger contrast on the dude on the left, also shrinking him a bit and making him higher up, after correcting the anatomical mistakes i made on xiao on the right.

i also made the background more noticeable... or less noticeable in places (all those ink brushes.... for nothing T-T)
and either way... i was extremely satisfied with the results i was getting.

so i not only enhanced some areas, i also heavily de-saturated the image at the borders, making some places completely black and white and concentrating the contrast and light to the center.

i asked for advice once again, and the only thing that came back, was that xiao's (for us) right arm was a bit weird... the upper arm was bent a bit through my liquify and the shoulder seemed too low....
i also noticed that the bottom left corner was a bit too dark and pulled too much attention to itself, so i added some lighter red gradients and textures in.

but after all that was edited, i was about to call the piece finished.

well.... that was until i wondered who xiao was in mythology.

i already knew that he is a yaksha and what that meant for his character development process, but... apparently xiao was supposed to also represent a specific entity. which is also why his signature weapon is called the "primordial jade winged spear" and it's passive ability is named "eagle spear of justice"

xiao is mihoyo's "version" of the golden-winged great peng. now... since i'm tired, lazy and don't feel like paraphrasing the legend of dapeng jinchi mingwang... here's what wikipedia writes about it (i left out the few parts that are not relevant in the context of genshin and this illustration):

"Legend holds that in primordial times the original Phoenix (Fenghuang), the leader of flying beings, gave birth [...] to the eagle named the Golden Winged Great Peng. The Buddha then promoted the peacock to be his godmother [...] and gave the eagle a high position in heaven.

Peng sits at the head of the Buddha's throne in the Western Paradise. His fiery temper was aroused when the bat-spirit Nü Tofu listened to the Buddha's sermon on the Lotus Sutra at Leiyin Temple with other stars. Nü Tofu [...] stained the Buddhists' pure land. As a result, Peng swooped down from the throne and snatched Nü Tofu up in his beak, killing her. The Buddha admonished Peng for transgressing Buddhist law and exiled him to earth. [...]

According to martial arts master Liang Shouyu's book, "[A] Dapeng is a great bird that lived in ancient China. Legend has it, that Dapeng was the guardian that stayed above the head of Gautama Buddha. Dapeng could get rid of all evil in any area. Even the Monkey King was no match for it. [...] The Buddha sent Dapeng to earth to protect China.[...]" "

now... when we then also catch a glimpse at the mentioned monkey king sun wukong, he essentially rebelled against heaven and then was imprisoned under a mountain by buddha. he is described to be skilled at fighting, defeating the best warriors, heaven has to offer.
this is also a nice little reference to guyun stone forest, where morax imprisoned an ancient god in the depth of the ocean, by yeeting huge stone spears at him, thus creating islands with several mountains.

... and... well... when we look at the story for his signature weapon we can read the following:
"So the Geo Archon fashioned a black kite by hand with jade and stones.
The stone bird took to the unbound skies once forged. Into the heart of the ocean it dove, into the battlefield with the behemoth and the whale.
Into the depths of the sea the behemoth sank, there to stay forever."

which is a pretty neat and obvious reference to sun wukong and him not being a match for dapeng :)

long story short: the golden-winged great peng is a guardian of china, sent by the buddha, killed a bat-spirit named nü tofu, and takes the shape of a golden eagle.

now.... random fun facts, since we already went over the whole "guardian of liyue, sent by morax" a few times....
xiao's former name was "alatus" and his constellation is called "alatus nemeseos" .... in the original chinese version his original name consists of the hanzi of "gold" and the one for the mythical bird "peng" and his constellation can be translated to "golden-winged peng king constellation"
in addition to that, xiaos signature dish is tofu. it's also the only mortal food he eats. in his character story 3 it is revealed, that he absolutely loves that stuff to pieces. apparently he likes the texture of it, as it is said to be similar to the texture of the dreams he devoured, whilst under the control of the evil god.... just a nice little detail, since dapeng killed nü tofu, whilst she was simply fascinated by the lotus sutra of the buddha.

anyways! enough mythology for this chapter >w<

essentially all that stuff boils down to:
xiao is actually a golden eagle in buddhist mythology and the child of a phoenix. i love fire-related themes, am a buddhist and still had the feeling that something was missing to the piece.

so... let's put one and one together, and i started to expand the canvas, so i could add noone else, other than the golden-winged great peng himself.

my main idea, was to create a frame, that seems to weave all of this together into one entity. it drives the picture away from just being xiao fighting against himself and his past, and puts a larger focus on the fact, that these are all facettes of one single character, creating some sort of context to the whole thing.

and that's that then!

man... i warned ya that this one was gonna take long >w<"

either way... i had an absolute blast working on this piece. and i probably will draw more larger pieces now and then, but.... don't expect a too drastic change...
i love my little character drawings that take me a maximum of two days of work ^-^""

i hope y'all liked me just.... rambling on and on about the character and the mythology behind it, and hope even more so, that you liked my illustration in the end!

wish me luck, guys. maybe i have a chance of winning at least something in the end >w<
but even if not... i don't really care. i had a lot of fun, and just.... chiseling away at a piece over several days until it reached a point, where i could say "this is where it is done" was a really refreshing experience and made me more curious to add more detail into future projects.

anyways... this chapter already is wayyyyy too long, so i guess i'll end it here. hopefully we'll read each other again in the next one!