Hello everyone! I’m back for another art challenge~

∠( ᐛ 」∠)＿

(TLDR; please skip this part if you don’t wanna read it. I just want to let out my feeling a bit)

Actually, I’m feeling a bit down since New Year. I received a news that the company who provide my main source of income suddenly announced a new policy and decided to purge some of us. Well… my partner and I are lucky enough to not get washed away by the current news, but the downside of it they cut half of our money just so that they can preserve their finance pool to run for another few months or years.

I already anticipated that they will announce this new policy since a few months back, but I never thought it will be this quite… disastrous. They hyped it so much and even reassure us that this is for the good of everyone.

And they thought it’s best to announce it on New Year’s Eve too. (°ㅂ°╬)

Needless to say, me and my partner unable to enjoy our vacation. Plus, my Whatsapp suffers from constant messages from my group and thankfully it only stops at near 1000 messages.

My partner allows me to decide if I wanted to continue with our project but I ask her to give me some time to break down and recuperate my wits.

I don’t like dwelling too deep on my problem so I decided that I need to take a short break and do what I like.

What’s the better way to do than drawings things that I love?

Wo-Owl

So recently, @cartoonistpandan creates this rad logo called Wo-Owl for the #steem-cartoon community which to represents the life of an artist is similar to an owl; staying up late at night to create good contents!

Not long after that, @perennial announce the first Steem-Cartoon’s challenge to celebrate the birth of Wo-Owl’s logo.

I decided that I wanted to draw Ryoko Sasaki from my webcomic “Seasons: Winter” as she’s my most favorite character among others.

Why Ryoko? Because she’s a fun, loving, strong and determined woman… even when she just turned into a ghost. We still haven’t reveal Ryoko’s background story yet, but since I’m also responsible for Ryoko’s design, she went through a lot of emotional challenges ever since she’s old enough to understand that her world is far too different than any other normal people and she’s forced to play the role that’s opposite of what she wanted. She has an older brother and he’s one of the reason that she able to escape from her gilded cage and be what she is right now.

Back to Steem-Cartoon’s challenge

So the theme for this challenge is ‘Fantasy’. Coincidently, I’m supposed to design a demon queen version of Ryoko for Seasons: Winter’s Patreon Reward. Since there are no other restricting rules for this challenge, I use this as an excuse to go full blown on digital illustration and bring out all of my arsenal drawing tools.

Before I start with the drawing, I listed out the things that I wanted to include in this illustration:

1. Gilded cage – Representing Ryoko’s world restriction
2. Blue Roses – To show the artificial beauty.
3. Stars – Because I love stars!
4. Crescent Moon – I believe the Latin term of Ceres is “to create”? or something similar.
5. Demon Queen – it’s Ryoko’s nickname given by me and my partner. Because beneath the demure and kind Ryoko’s exterior, lies a dark entity that you don’t want to be messed up with! (this is shown in our latest chapter).
6. Purple and Gold – A luxury that Ryoko can afford and purple colour associates with royalty.
7. Owls - Usually associates with magic and higher wisdom. It also symbolize with femininity and a guardian from what I have researched.

Stage 1: Sketch

For illustration purpose, I usually start sketching with paper and pencil. ( ᐛ )و

Stage 2: Sketch Refining

Now that I have the look I’m going for, I darken the lines so it will be easier when I transferring this to digital.

Stage 3: Digital Refining

After I scanned and bring this into PS and Sai, I fixed some of her body parts and start sketching the background.

Stage 4: Lineart

I prefer my lines to be thin and have an organic feeling to it. Those flower laces are killing me even when after I simplify them as much as I able to! I usually avoid using black colour and instead I use a purple colour for my lineart.

Stage 5: Blocking/ Base Colour

The easiest part but also a pain if you’re too picky with the colour choice. I like my colour to be muted pastel but at the same time bright colour… if that makes any senses? Or in other words, I don’t like my colour to look ashy.

Stage 6: Shading

Usually, I will only use 1 colour for shading but for illustration purpose, I will use 2-3 colours darker than my base colour.

Stage 7: Overlay

I like my shading to have a transition between 2 different colours. So I make a new Overlay layer to apply red, blue or purple at certain areas.

Stage 8: Background

I use the same method from stage 5-7 for my background. The flowers supposed to be roses but I changed it to cherry blossoms as I don’t have any decent rose brushes in CPS. At first, I wanted to use pink for the blossoms but I think the colour a bit clashing with the whole illustration. So I changed it to blue to complement with Ryoko’s design and also easing my eyes when looking at it. As for the moon and skies, I use the existing materials provided by CPS.

And I think I went overkill with those flowers.

Σ(°ロ°)

Stage 9: Final Adjustments

I saturate the colour a bit and also stamping my watermarks. Last but not least, I incorporated Wo-Owls logo in between of the cage bars to show that the cage was somehow imbue by magic.

Gif Process

Well, that’s all for me! I hope this illustration looks fantasy-ish or at least qualified as an entry. It has been like I dunno… 5 months maybe since I did my last proper illustration? I’m happy that I able to create my first illustration in 2018 and I hope I can make it more just like my fellow artist friends~

(≧∇≦)/

Peace out!
Ryss