Young Kvothe

The jack of hearts is Kvothe as a child. I wanted to capture him learning and practicing the lute. It is the same lute that you seen in the Kvothe Tarbean card, but in that card it is broken (making it his fathers lute). I hired a lovely young model for this. He was professionally paid $20 and a Cadbury creme egg. He was darling. I used about five reference shots of him to compose in exactly the right manner for the above painting.

I spent a lot of time considering how the cards flip. With this one, I wanted to give the illusion that he may be cross legged, so I positioned one tucked and one down. I actually shot several poses and this is a combination. We shot him on a stump in my backyard with natural lighting.

You can see the hint of a decorative wagon wheel behind him. It's important to me that there are elements that you only notice after staring at the art for an extended period of time. You will also see that the tree shadows on his shirt also subtly form into the shape of a wheel (symbolically tying both into Ruh reality and the Amyr)

I went with Lord Grayfallows colors of green and gray. You will notice through the Ruh cards that while they wear greens and greys, there is actually a lot of variation in the actual hues and shades. This is on purpose. The world is an inconsistent place, as are fabrics that are hand dyed.