A fairy is a mythical winged creature that originated in European folklore. A fairy is usually a gentle supernatural creature that looks like a woman or a female elf. In literature, fairies have several abilities. Aside from the ability to fly, some of their abilities are magic, teleportation, telekinesis, nature manipulation, and healing.
This is another artwork I did for Spice NFT project. I was thinking of drawing a gentle looking creature for those who are fond of characters that are very feminine. I came up with this fairy and it's an addition to the variety I want to give more options to the buyers.
SKETCH
Since fairies are associated with nature, I often see works where the background is forest while I was looking for good references. I saw one with a tiny fairy on lake so I decided to do something like that for a change. In my concept, I changed the fairy into a normal life size to give more emphasis to the subject. I got the idea of hairstyle from side curl hairdos I recall from attending formal events. Instead of the usual fairies sitting or standing on land areas, I let her sit on a huge maple leaf on the lake. I included rocky mountains and bushes on the background for this nature themed creature.
LINEART
For the lineart, I did not include the bushes and rocky mountains because they actually don't have one. I plan to create the bush by tapping the brush and I was thinking of using texture brush for the rocky mountain. I focused the lineart on the subject.
BASE COLORS
I noticed that most of my character designs have dark colored hair, I decided to give this fairy a light color for her hair. This will also make her look very feminine and gentle. I chose rosy brown for the eye color to give her hair a contrast. For the outfit, I used cool colors on her for a change because I often see fairies wear white. I made a mint green and pastel green combination to go well with white and gold. These soothing colors are part of the gentle look I want to achieve.
The reason why I want a maple leaf is because I want something different. I want a red leaf for a more attractive look that contrasts the water and the green bushes. I just applied gradient on both the leaf and the lake before shading them.
SHADING
This part is where the wings become visible. Its lineart and base color are both white so it's only visible once completed with a bit of background. I played with opacity since a fairy's wings are quite transparent. I added shades of pink and purple to make it look lively and to match her purple nail polish. Since Spice requires us to incorporate a chili on all our works, I made it a part of her magic instead of putting it on bushes. It's more visible that way.
LEARNING ABOUT BUILT-IN BRUSHES
I was browsing at the brushes since I'm looking for the texture brush I am about to use on the rocky mountains. I plan to do it first. This is how I found out that Krita (drawing software) has built-in nature brushes. I was so happy to find a leaf brush and a rock brush. I used a big rock brush to form the rocky mountains then I used the texture brush for shading. For the bushes, I used the leaf brush. I tapped this brush until I fill the areas with bushes. I used three colors for each bush for the base color and shading. I also keep on changing the brush size since leaves have different sizes. I also used the leaf brush for the shadows and reflections of the bushes. Lastly, I used airbrush and blur tool to create a smooth texture in shading the lake. I want to do more enhancements on this lake if only I have more time. I have two drawings left to do after this one so I just did a simple shading. I also did the magical effects on this process. I used the gaussian blur tool for the glow effects on the chili.
BACKGROUND
A simple sky background will be good enough to fill this drawing since the landscape already has a lot of details. I just made a blue and white gradient for this one.
FINAL RESULT
Since I discovered how helpful these built-in brushes are, I started to explore more on them while doing the finishing touches for this drawing. I tried to search for a cloud brush to complete this sky background. Unfortunately, it's not included on the ones in Krita so I tried to figure if I can download and import some brushes. I'm glad to know that it's possible. I discovered that Photoshop brushes can be imported in Krita so I downloaded a cloud brush pack then I watched a tutorial to learn how to import this brush pack. After succeeding with the import, I was able to complete the finishing touches using cloud brush. It turned out well while it saved my time from manually doing it with airbrush. Here's the final result, beautiful fairy maintaining the beauty of nature. This NFT was sold out two months ago.
I'm very thankful for doing this art. It made me discover that there are different brushes available in the software I am using which can be very helpful in doing the background where I struggle the most. It's my first time exploring them since I was so busy trying to finish all the 12 drawings I need to submit and the deadline is drawing near.
It's really convenient and time efficient as it cuts a lot of redundancies in drawing. I remember a pro artist saying that no one will pay you for drawing every single leaf in your background which I totally agree. These brushes can help artists focus on enhancements, details, and finishing touches which are very crucial as they determine the final result of the artwork. I won't be holding back on doing more complex yet more beautiful backgrounds now that I learned about these brushes. This also made me appreciate Krita even more because it's very powerful for a free software. I will keep on exploring more time efficient and powerful techniques to level up my succeeding drawings.
