No, you Snape-aholics, it's not a younger Snape. Although it may look sort of like him and it even looks like he's holding a potion thing. And it's not Sirius. In fact, *gasp*, it's not a Harry Potter character.

This is Valek, from Poison Study (by Maria V. Snyder). It's quite a fun novel.
I have actually been wanting to do an illustration of him for a long time, since reading the book a year and a half ago....so I finally got around to it.

That's--you guessed it--a vial of poison he's holding. Valek is an assassin-type person. Is he "good" or "bad?" I'll let you decide.

I know that the hand looks terrible. The fingers look terrible and the back of the palm (whatever the proper terminology is) looks terrible. But I've drawn and erased and redrawn it too many times, and I just am too wearied to care anymore. Maybe I'll post a changed version later. Or maybe someone can be nice, and someone who is good with hands can show me how it's supposed to look.

Okee.