Darker Thoughts

Time is weird, it simultaneously feels like its been an eternity since I last posted, and also like it happened just last week. A lot has happened since (like Endwalker), but everything has also stayed the same, which is definitely the case with my struggle to get started with anything, lol.

So many times in the last 3 months I really wanted to draw, going as far as opening SAI and knowing what I wanted to do, and then my brain was like "how about you check out this random youtube vid instead?", always coming up with any possible excuse not to do it. And then I start getting filled with doubts, like is it even worth doing anything if its never going to be as good as what I imagined? Always having to deal with that disappointment when I start something new, over and over. But Ive touched on all of this in a previous post so I wont waste more time with it, Id rather talk about the art itself.

The good news is, Im REALLY happy with this one. Overall I tried adding more dramatic lighting and giving it more of a "finished" touch in the form of grain + added sharpness. Its weird how we work but, when things are too clean, they look bad, like its fake or sterile (common problem with people who are just starting out on digital art, or with 3D models for example). This is something Ive been struggling with for the longest time so I wanna play around with it more. That said Im also on a 1080p monitor so I dont know how much impact that has, but Im planning to upgrade to 4K later this year and Im pretty excited about it. Been on 1080p since 2012 so its about time I moved on.

Anyway, as you can see from the sketch, this was supposed to be a lot simpler at first, but since as always I didnt know what to do with the background I kept trying different things. Originally I was gonna have her lying in a shallow pool or something, similar to "Still Waters" from 2 years ago, but I wasnt sure if I could pull it off so then I had the idea of just having her completely underwater, falling deeper into the ocean, which have looked awesome... If I could actually do it.

The next one after that was to have her floating high up in the air, with a giant moon as the background. This looked pretty cool and its where the wings came from. I had the thought of trying things like wings on her before but just never really went forward with it until now. But since Ive been delving into that "goth" theme lately I thought it was the perfect chance to do it, and Im glad I did because I think it looks awesome and also helped a lot with the composition, due to the way they frame the image, cover part of the background, and help focus your attention on her.

That said while the moon idea was cool it still wasnt working, it was just too distracting due to how bright it was compared to everything else and the lighting I wanted to do didnt work with it. So thats when I tried this which I guess was meant to be a cathedral interior or something? This is when everything finally came together. It finally made sense for everything to be in shadow except for the light coming from the top and hitting her hair and breasts.

Then it was just a matter of tweaking the colors, which still took a bit because I didnt know if I wanted to go with more of a night time look, with a blue hue, or this. But after looking at both versions back and forth a lot I thought this was better overall. I like that the colors are subdued except for the reds which really stand out, kind of a similar look to "Requiem".

The last additions were actually the earrings/accessories and gloves. The drawing was like 95% done when I decided to try adding stuff. Ive become a pretty big fan of those earrings which again were first added with Requiem. And I love lace gloves so this was a chance I couldnt pass up. Full nudity was just fine too, but I feel like these things add an extra touch of elegance to it, and more detail in general.

Btw, this doesnt mean she has wings now, lol. As always the pic is completely up to personal interpretation, but I imagined it more as a "self reflection" kind of thing, a view of her inner world. Even though it was definitely not intentional, I realized halfway through it was incredibly fitting with the endwalker theme, and the characters struggle with despair, so I thought that was a nice lore friendly bonus.

Anyway thats that. Not sure whats coming next but you can probably count on seeing some more Yae Miko because she is coming out in just 3 days and Im pretty excited (between my character and Yae, theres gonna be a lot of pink, so better get used to it, lol).