This image started out as a gift for someone who had helped me greatly in FFXIV. I also had personal projects where I needed to practise armour details, and after I saw what their character was wearing, I just had to ask if I could draw it.

I had no real goal in mind for this piece, other than working on texture and details of the armour. This was practised from a screenshot after all, bar a few differences like height of the shield, battle damage, etc.

I feel that maybe my metal effect is still not sufficient and it became obvious to those who saw this as I was progressing it that after the greyscale was done, I had no set path in mind.

I then began messing with various colours, brushes and motion blur filters and suddenly the background started to appeal to me.
I added arrows flying past, and one impacting, for additional effect. Then finished off with two versions - one with a blue spell effect on the shield and one without.