Art Attack! #5: Golden Flowers 🌻

Hey Steemit!

This is my first time using steempeak! So if some things are a little wonky I apologise. And I'm not sure about posting in communities but I hope this is okay. 🙂

It's Art Attack time again! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my paintings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artworks, 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.

If you didn't catch the last post, it was a piece I did for Sean's birthday last year, where I recreated a "once in a lifetime" moment of the two of us admiring Mt Fuji!

So all my past Art Attacks have pretty much been presents for other people, but most of my regular artworks are actually references to games that I like! And this post will be showing one of the first game-related paintings I've ever done.

This piece was actually done in May 2019, when I had just started getting into painting. I had also recently finished playing through Undertale for the first time, and was caught in the tangled web of the Undertale fandom. I spent so much time reading the wiki, discovering references and learning about what happens in the genocide route because I was too scared (and tbh lazy) to do it myself.

Anyway, a big thing in Undertale is the reference to Golden Flowers (a hint to the antagonist constantly watching you). But I realise that 3 of my favourite games have this commonality - Golden Flowers. So I decided to do a piece on it!

Sorry I don't have a picture of my draft, but this is after outlining!

If you're not familiar, the games I referenced here are Plants vs. Zombies, Stardew Valley and Undertale. 3 very different games but I like them all the same.

Let's start painting!

Coincidentally, 5 May 2019 was the 10 year anniversary of PvZ! Man 10 years already! Seems like just yesterday I was planting my first sunflower on the lawn.

Hellow yellow! That's from a different game

I think in terms of story, Undertale is probably the strongest of the 3. While Stardew does have its moments, and PvZ is mainly for the gameplay, Undertale has such a gripping story; probably one of the best I've ever seen. And it's got that effect of making me think about it for days after playing. While it might be due to the fear factor, I don't play many games that do that.

It's not easy being green!

I actually really loved how the green leaves of Sunflower came out. It looked so much better than I thought it would. I hadn't learn any watercolour techniques, but I tried my best to blend the colours, and create a gradient as close to the original as I could. And I think it came out pretty well!

Faces done! Sunflower took the most time to paint, but I'm really glad with how she turned out.

Soil done!

Actually this was all I had envisioned for the piece. But then I figured the background looked too plain, so I decided to add some things.

Tadaa! This is what the final piece looks like!

I think the question mark on the Junimo added some personality to it. And the auras of Flowey and Sunflower combating each other adds another dimension to the piece too, and kinda hints to their effects on the player (or at least me) in their respective games. I know I hated seeing Flowey (and wanted to kill him so bad) and Sunflower is always a blessing.

So I actually posted this piece on reddit, and one comment summed this painting up pretty well:
"One is really good, one is really bad, and one is a mediocre crop".
Yeah I guess that's pretty accurate.

Thanks for reading!