A/N: 

So last month's illustration of our 2022 calendar was the Opet Festival, which means winter’s almost here, and nothing better than remembering a bit of all that heat we’ve survived to… —but not here in Ireland, definitely— Formally welcoming you to our Egypt Universe or ‘Lapis-lazuli Curse’, as we chose to call them and to celebrate with us taking this spooky month as an excuse as well. We’ve slipped a bit of these Egyptian Randy and Lu Han in the sketches sheets we posted a while ago –we’ve more so maybe this spooky time it’s the perfect moment to share all of them with you–, and as we said then, we’re at the end of the 19^th Dynasty, the one of Ramesses II, the New Kingdom period around 1200 BC. Randy here’s the crown prince and the current pharaoh’s last male heir alive, together with his servant, valet, best friend, and lover Lu Han, who mysteriously appeared when he was little among in the river among the reeds after a long, long trip from his native Myanmar, so was adopted by the queen to serve the young prince. Here, celebrating together. 

‘Heb nefer en Ipet’ or ‘Beautiful feast of Oper’, was one of the most important ancient Egypt festivals, honouring the god Amon, her consort Mut and their son Khons, the Triad of the Sacred City of Thebes –anciently called Waset–. Once a year, when the Nile flooded, the statues of the gods were carried in a joyous procession from the Karnak Temple in barques through the streets, thence onto river barges to the Luxor Temple, where they remained for 24 days before returning to Karnak in another procession. The pharaoh met the gods in their sanctuary and purified himself in their presence, emerging rejuvenated.

But this is just the first story of this two different timelines Universe, are you curious about the second one and what happened to them?

Hope you like this little piece of their story! It was a hard drawing since we had it very clear in our minds and, as sometimes happened, we were afraid it didn’t end up being exactly what we wanted –to be honest, this tends to happen in our Egyptian Universe, both good and bad way–… Because of the three layers: the background with the temple, which needs to look majestic, and the crowd, which shouldn’t have to look too doodled; the middle ground with the Nile and the boats, where the heat should look intense but we wanted it more golden… And finally, the foreground with the shadowed and cooler papyrus reeds. We had also clear that it has to be bright and colourful, and which colours we should use, with gold and blue lapis-lazuli everywhere. None of which was easy. From Aurel at the pencils, pencils never had the correct colours no matter if you have three different boxes of three different brands –true story–, to Chris fighting with Lightroom. We’re mostly satisfied with the result but we can do it much better in future Egyptian prince Randy and his favourite, Lu Han illustrations.

So now, what do you think about it? As always, we’d like to know your opinions, impressions, and wanderings. Your comments are the fuel we need 🙌🏻💙