A way to the woman's heart

..is through kenjutsu. Or at least it is for Kaoru's heart. For in Ayezur's beautifull piece of Rurouni Kenshin fanfiction "Vaster than Empires" Kaoru Kamiya is indeed a fighter at heart. The story is set in AU verse and situated to the year 1601. The story can be found here: [link] This fanart piece is for chapter 3, set during the legendary dojo scene where Kenshin stumbles upon Kaoru as she is brushing of some rust from her kendo skills. And Kenshin is totally floored - indeed in 17th century Japan a highborn lady practising kenjutsu? And Kenshin being the total sweetheart he is, is absolutely in love after seeing Kaoru in her true element. So, what does our gentleman do? He clearly approves. So Kaoru dares to take the very first step to spend time with her husband:

"If it's not too much intrusion… I had wanted to practice a bit more. Is it alright if I take the other end of the hall?"

His eyes widened – the heat in them was banked, and he looked almost as guileless as he normally did.

"Of course it is," he said. "It's no trouble, that it's not."

"Thank you." She bowed back into the hall and drew out her practice sword, running through the first movement a few more times for good measure, and then beginning on the second one. She could hear her husband practicing, although she faced away from him: she could feel his presence, too, now that he wasn't tamping it down. There was no rage in it that she could detect, only a deep focus on what he was doing and hints of… curiosity?

She shook herself and refocused on her work. If he wasn't going to make a big deal out of her swordsmanship, than she wasn't going to bring it up. There were too many unknowns in the situation. As she practiced, she found that he became simply part of the landscape, and that was… nice. She wasn't used to practicing alone.

So. Like my other piece, "A gesture of goodwill" this too is not an illustration of a descibed scene, but set in the flowing moment of their session in Dojo.

In this picture I used 2 base pictures. However, I did change those to suit my needs. Kenshin’s pose is from original manga (chapter 69, page 1), drawn by Nobuhiro Watsuki. Kaoru is from Yamaguchi Shinji’s Kaorushou, page 6. Kaoru’s face got the inspiration from Emi Takei (as was approriate). The dojo and perspective however, are my own blunders so forgive me the mistakes. The Dojo design has gotten some inspiration from Ruroken anime background dojo that is seen for example in episode 79. Also the Kanji's in the scripture I based on image search made from google. Also it should be mentioned that I used 4 textures for this picture, the oak, shoji, tatami and paper textures. However, Kenshin's kimono design and laquered saiya design are both my work. The kimono design are yet again from Himura family crest that I designed for Shogun's demon. I just like to use that design.. in particular I am totally smitten to adding it to Kenshin's kimonos. For some reason I like to decorate his possessions a lot for VTE fanart. Indeed I am making him seem a bit like an over elaborate peacock. Heh.

In total this picture took about 16 hours give or take 2. The in progress story of the picture can be found in my tumblr blogpost yet again: [link]

I would like to thank again Ayezur for being an source of inspiration and giving insightfull comments how to better match my artwork to her vision.