God on high
Hear my prayer
In my need
You have always been there

He is young
He's afraid
Let him rest
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

He's like the son I might have known
If God had granted me a son.
The summers die
One by one
How soon they fly
On and on
And I am old
And will be gone.

Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy

You can take
You can give
Let him be
Let him live
If I die, let me die
Let him live
Bring him home
Bring him home
Bring him home.

-Bring Him Home from Les Miserables

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'Draw them lying on straw', they said. 'It will be fun', they said. Yeah, the background for this took the longest out of everything, particularly the pile of straw because I decided to draw each strand individually. I'm really happy with how it turned out, though. Usually, by the time I get to the background on a picture I'm so ready to be done I rush it and it ends up looking half assed. This time I went in with the intention of putting serious effort into the background and really taking my time. After all, I want to make this story a comic one day, and so I need to learn how to paint backgrounds.

If you haven't guessed, this picture was directly inspired by listening to the song. The lyrics were just such a perfect match for Roland talking about Arik that I had to do something with it. This is actually the first time Roland (the brown cat that's sitting up) has been featured in a full drawing, so that's kind of exciting. I need to finish his character sheet, but just haven't been in the mood to work on it. Roland and Arik are meant to be sheltering in an abandoned barn, which they do quite often because they're constantly moving from place to place, stealing to survive in a world where the commoners are stepped on and extorted by a corrupt king. Although Roland isn't biologically related to Arik, he thinks of him as his child and is the one always taking care of him. Arik is actually fullgrown (he's not small, Roland is just really big) but he still relies heavily on Roland and likely wouldn't survive without him. Arik is obviously fighting some inner demons, and in this picture Roland is wishing for him to be happy and find peace, but I can't go too deep into it, since that's what the comic is for. ;)

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No critique desired. Please respect that.

The art and characters are copyright © VexVamp, and you are not permitted to steal, trace, copy, reference, or otherwise redistribute them in any way. I also do not want to see this posted on RP sites, Facebook, YouTube, etc. That's still art theft.