This was my first big commission in my (now) classic style, made for  theleonard back in mid 2020.
I was quite surprised that someone wanted to get art from me, and would pay (at the time) that much money for it, so it really meant a lot to me. I think It's to date the largest (by area) artwork I have done, and it certainly took a toll on me, because I think it's also the one I took the longest on - drawing those background details was quite taxing, and I didn't yet develop the strategies I used in my later works.

The idea for the piece was a diptych with a mostly similar and symmetrical design, featuring two characters from the commissioner - I think their's and their partner's. The general idea for both characters' gear was a pair of Landsknecht-inspired clothing and typical medieval armour.

The frame for the picture continues the typical floral and faunal motifs (explained more thoroughly in the previous post), and consists of three main parts:
1. The top is a tudor-inspired arch, with a flower in the key, and the two characters (portrayed in a style closer to those of medieval bestiaries) facing each other, on checkered backgrounds of the other character's color set - I was quite fond of this, as it connected the entire piece together.
2. The sides are a narrow view of a landscape, meant to call back to the big mountain in the background of the main image, and the side panels were meant to be somewhat connected each other; as if one view was split into four vertical slices.
3. The bottom is an autumnal birch forest. This part was quite taxing to draw, so I will admit after all these years that I have somewhat unceremoniously copied and pasted some of the trees between the two frames, slightly changing their position and small details.

The two characters were posed in the middle of their respective frames, facing each other when the diptych is complete, but in poses and expressions that could work on their own when the diptych was split in half. Both characters' clothing is inspired by the extravagant fashion of (very) late medieval / early modern Landsknechts, with two dominant colors for each character.

The character on the left wields a typical late medieval one handed sword in an ornate sheath, and wears a split breastplate with a heraldic rondel protecting the armpit, and only one greave - a practice occuring among pike-wielding soldiers which goes back to antiquity.

The character on the right wields a short polaxe, and wears a breastplate with two tassets and a chainmail skirt. They are also equipped with a dagger and a buckler for close combat or duelling.

The background of the centerpieces was meant to be a contiguous landscape, distinct enough for both pieces to work on their own, but still be recognizeable as a pair and complete each other when put together - a motif that I hope is now clear throughout the artwork. It's also one of the first to feature my style of drawing background trees - it's not the most elaborate, but it works well I think.

After I did it as an experiment in the previous (first) artwork of this style, this one really established my passion for stylized signatures - for my medieval (or inspired) art, I used a late gothic font; stylized enough to be unique and fit with the entire piece, but simplified enough to be readable by an average person.
I mostly sourced them from a small document of latin fonts I had found some time earlier - it's available here: https://www.typofonts.com/palefont.html - I highly reccomend it.