WEEK #2: Steem Cartoon Challenge #1 (Wo-Owl)

Hey everyone! Angel here. Thank you for all the support so far!

Today I'm sharing my entry for the Steem Cartoon community's first art challenge held by @perennial, featuring the brand new logo "Wo-owl" designed by @cartoonistpandan.

The theme was fantasy, and as usual, I was inspired by fantasy RPG's! The background story for my idea revolves around a village cat-girl who lived a quiet, boring life until she bought a cute wooden owl-shaped charm from a mysterious traveling merchant. One day, she thought to herself aloud while playing with the charm, "I'm tired of this quiet life. I want to see more of the world and find out what I'm actually capable of." The charm began to glow a bright green, inspiring her to start her travels with its magic and the unknown. On her journey away from home, she discovered that her charm helps to summon an owl-being that protects and guides her whenever she's in need of help.

I actually had a completely different idea revolving around a ritual/crowning for an owl-spirit tribe. Owls are so mysterious and even ominous, so I wanted to draw something that reflects that feeling, but after sketching it, the mood seemed too dark and the idea was ultimately scrapped because I wanted to create something more light-hearted for Steem Cartoon's first art challenge and to celebrate the new logo.

Here is the overall progress, condensed in a collage for easier step-by-step viewing.

The idea for the owl-being summon was inspired by an anime movie of "Ah! My Goddess!" that I watched as a kid where the goddesses had large angel companions that aided them in high-caliber spell casting. For me, I tried to portray Steem Cartoon's mission to serve as a platform to support other artists on Steemit that want to build a community together. I added some flying whales in the sky because I wanted to add a little more fantasy to the drawing.

I sketched my idea above and worked out the line-art. I was in the mood for a pretty blue-and-pink sunset so I laid down those colors in the background to establish the feeling first. Then I added the shadow and highlights to the characters, and later some feather design to the owl-being. I wanted to make the image more cohesive to I used a dark purple over the whole drawing to make a cool tone. Last, I added a rainbow lens flare effect using the gradient tool, softly brightening the image, and manually drew in the Wo-owl logo in the girl's hands.

Here's my progress for her face.

1. (Left to Right) Base/flat colors applied.
2. Added a reddish shadow to skin.
3. Used a very light yellow to add minimal highlights.
4. Added dark and light colors to the hair and cat ears.
5. Added shadow to the eyes with white dots.

Progress for his face.

I ended up making his sclera dark and high iris neon green afterward.

Thanks for checking out my post!

I used Paint Tool SAI to sketch, line-art, and color, then Photoshop for color manipulation/editing.

To close, I'd like to share that since joining Steemit, I've started to draw more and actually enjoy it. Previously, I tried using social media such as Tumblr and Twitter to share my work but didn't receive much feedback, so thank you to everyone who has upvoted, resteemed, followed, and commented so far! Everyone has been so, so kind and helpful. I hope the art community here will continue to grow. Let's do more fun stuff together!

I'm wondering if there's more I can do to post twice a week and was thinking about periodic Q&A's or fun sketch posts based off of previous comments suggesting themes. If there's any part of my process anyone would like for me to elaborate on, I could try to compose a detailed tutorial post in the future too!

Close up of characters together.

See you next time!