Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
This is another birthday art piece I did since I'm so bad at giving gifts I rather draw special personalised artworks for my friends! I find personalised art a better gift than anything I could buy in this day and age, and since most of my friends are international it just makes more sense to send gifts virtually nowadays.
Anyway this was for one of my mods on my Twitch channel who goes by Akuji26! I'd previously done 2 art pieces for him for his birthdays since we've known each other for a while and he's always been a big presence in our community. This was the piece I did for him the previous year for him to use as a Twitch banner:
For this one I didn't really have much of an idea. But we were playing Stardew Valley together with some of my other mods on our community farm and he said he'd love it if I drew Emily's painting because I made a passing remark that I should try to draw it sometime. It just kinda stuck with me and since I have done some Stardew paintings in the past, I thought it'd be good practise to continue that series.
Source: Pocket Tactics
Also I saw a pretty good youtube tutorial I could follow for this one since they're also sand dunes. It's by Art with Flo and I love her tutorials and have followed along with her videos many times.
I drew all three of these simple pieces and it looked great but I definitely liked the one with more detail and texture.
So I tried to apply what I learnt from the tutorial to Emily's painting and used these references to help me:
I traced the sand dunes in the painting to get the right shape before I use Flo's techniques to make the shadows.
Then I added in the little oasis in the corner and drew some trees, colour referencing the other picture I found since I thought the green in the actual painting was a little too bright.
After adding in some textures on the sand dunes, I used the moon I drew from the other painting I did and popped it in here. I realise there isn't actually a moon in the in-game painting but I thought it would fill the space better.
But I followed Flo's tutorial and opted for a crescent moon instead and we get this:
So this is actually part 1 of the gift since it was a little too simple, so I thought of combining it with another and draw Emily herself presenting this painting since it is supposed to be hers after all.
For this one I wanted to follow a style of cartoon faces I've been admiring and found another video from Flo to follow that looked pretty similar to the style I was going for.
I loved the way she did the facial features so I followed it and got this girl! I think I drew her mouth too low though but otherwise it looked pretty good!
So again, it was time to apply it to Emily!
I drew her mouth a little higher this time and I think it looked better so she had more of a chin.
Once I coloured in her hair it was mostly done. I used the hair brushes to give it more detail. I had some trouble with her hands at first since I followed some vectors for the hand positions and it looked a little small at times but I think it turned out alright.
For the background I went with something simple to make her stand out and used some light brushes to create a sort of strobe effect so it looks cool and subtle.
I actually really liked how this turned out! The dry ink outline was actually not my intention but I thought it was an interesting style and not one I would typically go for if I hadn't been following some of Flo's tutorials. I tried to make Emily as accurate as I possibly could and I think I still managed to retain most of how she looks in-game while in this style.
The last time I tried to draw a girl in this style was on paper and it didn't go so well so I'm glad I finally managed to do it properly. I'm normally quite nervous when drawing people but this style makes it a lot simpler and I think it looks really pretty too, so will definitely be using this more in the future! Separately I think these pieces would've been too simple but together I thought they were good enough for a gift and I'm so glad Akuji loved it!
Here's the full timelapse:
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!