Splinterlands Art Contest - Week 358 - Olivia of the Brook

Hey there, everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful time. It's around that time of the week again - my entry for the Splinterlands Art Contest.

This week, I wanted to try my hand at drawing someone completely new - well, in other words, someone I had never drawn before, that's why I ended up choosing Olivia of the Brook for this round. I did leave her pet companion out of the picture this time, so that if (or more accurately when) I come back to her again, there's something new to add to the drawing as spice - a tiger, at that.

Anyway, this was the overview for this week's fan art. With that out of the way, let's dive right into the process of drawing and get ourselves dirty with the nitty-gritty details of it...

The Process

As always, I started off with the flat colors for the subject.

After having the base colors down and everything filled, it was time to think of something for the background. Given the Nature affinity of her, the pet, and her color scheme, I think it was a safe choice to go for a natural green.

With the basic coloring out of the way, it was finally time to add the details. I started that process by giving the drawing more highlights and depth to finally take it out of the 2D world and make her look more real. Now that her accessories and clothes were starting to take shape...

It was finally time to correct her skin tone and hair color. Giving her face a nice human-like color with blushes on her cheeks helped give the whole piece more life. And even tho her hair was already highlighted, it didn't look as good when her skin color was not right. I also cast the lighting and shadow from the environment and her accessories onto her face, and that might've been another one of the reasons that she finally started to look more human.

Now that everything was set in place (well, the initial step, cuz then we did need to get back to the subject and have some overall particle adjustments until she was ready for the final step), we had to go back and add the details to the background.

I added some hollow leaf shadows in the background. I did leave some parts in the back empty for any urgent, random ideas that might've hit me in the process, but it would've been too risky to add something so random out of nowhere, so I drafted the idea.

Another reason I thought the current setup was right and enough was because of the good harmony of the subjects present in the drawing, and adding more items to the final piece might have made the drawing look too unorganized and littered with unnecessary details.

The Result

And in the final step, I finally added in the glow around her staff (or spear, now that I think about it). The leaf pattern behind it had to be done, too, and last, but not least, to give her hair some volume and real feel, I added the white hair strands. This time, I didn't use a strong white since I didn't wanna highlight her hair too much and shift more focus than necessary. I think the purple at the end of her staff is mesmerizing and contrasting enough, so I wanted to preserve that. (and honestly, at this point in coloring, I don't think it was a wise decision to make such drastic changes so suddenly)

Original Game Art

And the card that the drawing was inspired by: