Kneel to the Twin Kings

I've been wanting to draw Renji ever since his new bankai was revealed! When he was first introduced as a villain, I really disliked him, but after his character development during the Soul Society arc, Renji became one of my favourite characters, and has been since. So it was about time I did some proper fan art of him!

Initially I tried to approximate the copic marker/watercolour effect that can be seen in a lot of traditional manga drawings, such as Kubo's own colour spreads. But while working, I deviated from this concept and mixed in some stronger colours and cleaner cell shading as commonly seen in anime. I guess that's because I have little to no experience with traditional colouring outside of pencils and pastels

Still, I'm kinda happy with how this turned out

Let me know what you guys think!

_{PS The title is a reference to both the name of Renji's new bankai, Souou Zabimaru/Twin Kings Snake Tail, and the title of that epic chapter in which he first reveals his bankai and stands up against Byakuya}

EDIT: I made a (rather messy) step-by-step of this deviation, with lots of random notes on drawing



More fan art: