Veritas ab Candidas final

After something like 9 months of waiting, I finally painted it. My holidays were full of art supply gifts, which I put to use here. It didn't all go perfectly. The last time I spent any time actually *painting* something, like, with paints and brushes, I can't have been older than 16. That's a goddamn decade ago. So this was interesting. I learned some things, which was the point, and on the whole, I think it looks pretty good. I wish I'd used a little less white, and I feel like the red and blue are competing for space, but I don't really know what I'd do about that. Anyway, it's done. On to the next nightmare.

I don't have a Premium account, so I can't "officially" request critiques, but I would welcome any constructive advice any of you good people would be willing to provide.

Acrylics (regular and metallic) on standard heavy sketchbook paper. The design reads "Veritas - Candidas" (Truth - Beauty). Cheesy, I know. It's funny, looking back, to realize that this thing started as a practice piece to get me used to doing insular-style illumination design. It became a somewhat bigger project than it was ever intended to be.

(If you're interested, there's a fuller description of the process, the lessons learned, and some thoughts about manuscript illumination and religion at my blog: Freehand Celt)