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!
So if you missed the last couple of posts, I've been sharing the process behind one of my biggest art challenges ever - the Christmas Countdown Challenge! Which is where I draw pieces according to the song; The 12 Days of Christmas!
I'm sure everyone is familiar with that song and we're currently up to Day 5 now since we did day 4 last week - four calling birds!
So the next line in the song is
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
Five golden rings
Four calling birds
Three french hens
Two turtle doves, and
A partridge in a pear tree
So it's time for the iconic 5 Gooooolden Rings line! For this the concept is pretty simple, since the first thing I thought of was the rings from Sonic, I just went with it. The only issue was I couldn't just draw the 5 rings and be done with it since that would be really plain, so I figured it would be more cohesive to draw a suitable background, and what better Sonic background is there other than the classic Green Hill Zone?
If you're unfamiliar with Sonic, Green Hill Zone is the first stage in the very first Sonic the Hedgehog game, and it's akin to 1-1 in Super Mario.
And I was looking for some reference images online when I came across this awesome fanart by ShadowNinja976 on Deviantart:
Source: Deviantart
I thought it looked so awesome and was exactly the kinda background I was thinking of, but of course we'd have the 5 rings along the track, and as such I would have to change the perspective a little bit. So this was the sketch I came up with:
And after tracing different ring sprites to get the right angle, we get these for the rings:
I tried my best to outline the track as smoothly as I could, but Clip Studio Paint doesn't have an auto-detect on arcs like Procreate does, and I can't draw lines smoothly so this was the best I had:
After hiding the sketch away and colouring in the rings, we get this:
Then came the fun part - colouring! I colour sourced from that fanart as awell and just went ahead with the colours.
Colouring the walls was interesting though since it reminded me a lot of waffles, or biscuits, kinda like Sweet Sweet Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy!
It was fun colouring these though since I didn't have to change colours that much. And I decided to draw a derp Sonic just chilling on top of the loop there. I actually wasn't aiming for a derp Sonic but I thought it looked pretty alright so I kept him at that.
It's also in reference to the Sanic memes that everyone loves I'm sure. But after colouring in the main part of the map we get this:
For the background I just wanted something simple; so I went with some mountains, waterfalls and rainbow but I made it faded to give it a misty feel and also make the foreground stand out.
And we were almost done until I realised the back walls should be darker so I basically added a dark brown filter over it. And we finally get this!
Other than the arc on the track I was actually quite pleased with how this came out! This piece actually took me quite some time to complete because of all the details. But I'm really happy with it so it's worth it for sure! After a while though I definitely got tired and wanted to be done with it which is why the background is like what it is. I definitely liked how colourful it is!
Anyway, that's gonna be it for this week! Tune in next time to see what I did for day 6 of my daily Christmas Countdown Challenge!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
