Commission: Steel Heart (Patreon)

This is a B/W commission I just finished today. The client wanted a black and white drawing of their character who appears in regularly in his gaming group. The character's name is Steel Heart and the client presented me with several interested challenges. The biggest was how to leave his hindquarters effectively exposed since his cutie mark had to be exposed to do some of his special abilities, and yet provide some degree of armor protection. I racked brain over this for awhile and then I had an inspiration of sorts. The character effectively wore a pack rig over his barding/ armor so he can carry his gear while on the road. During the Middle Ages into the Renaissance a lot of horse tack/ harnesses had horizontal band that ran across the flanks and the buttocks. Hanging down from this band were often numerous vertical flanges of leather that were decorated with metal ornamentation. At the same time I remembered that the early Imperial Roman Legionaries often wore a wide belt that had numerous vertical flanges/ strips that were covered with metal plates. Apparently the idea was to provide some flexible protection to the groin area. Especially when wearing the Lorica Segmentata http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorica_segmentata style armor which stopped at the waist. So I decided to combine the two elements together and give some minimal protection to Steel Heart's back side. Besides he was wearing an Italian Barbute-style helmet which was inspired by classical Greek and Roman armor so I figured that gave me artistic license!