Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! 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 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.
So in the last post, I shared one of my... I wouldn't say failures, but one of the pieces that I was kinda bummed with how it turned out.
I mentioned why I found it disappointing, but the perspective was off, and the background colours weren't a good choice imo. But I'm glad people still seemed to enjoy the post, and hopefully learned from my mistakes.
Anyway, since I shared one of my "failures" last week, I thought I should make up with one of my first successes! This is a piece I was really proud of, and still am, to be completely honest.
If you've seen a super awesome TV series called Avatar the Last Airbender, you may recognise these characters. But if you haven't, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American animated television series created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. It aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons, from February 2005 to July 2008. Avatar is set in an Asiatic-like world in which some people can manipulate the classical elements with psychokinetic variants of the Chinese martial arts known as "bending".
It primarily follows the protagonists, 12-year-old Aang and his friends, who must bring peace and harmony to the world by ending the Fire Nation's war with the rest of the Four Nations.
Source: SideReel
Avatar the Last Airbender (AtLA) is my all-time favourite TV show (and is the real Avatar to me, sorry James Cameron), and I'm so glad that so many people enjoy it and continue to talk about it and share it with their friends to this day. I still see so many videos analysing select episodes, characters and relationships from the show; that's some true fan loyalty right there.
Anyway, in the lore of the show, it's said that humans learned how to manipulate the elements from the masters of each element.
For Water, it was the Moon and the Ocean (tides), who were spirits that took on physical forms of koi fish called Tui and La (meaning push and pull in Mandarin). Pushing and pulling the water is the foundational move to waterbending.
Source: gfycat
For Earth, it was these creatures called badgermoles, who were blind and live in the caves that they dug themselves with earthbending.
Source: chordify
For Fire, it was the dragons, who were later hunted for sport.
Source: pinterest
And for Air, it was the sky bison! Huge furry creatures that could fly!
Source: avatar.fandom.com
A lot of people do fanart about the main characters of the show but I wanted to do a piece to showcase the majesty of these brilliant creatures, and after seeing this online, I was inspired to do one of my own!
Source: zerochan.net
So after dividing my paper into 4 equal rectangles, I set to work sketching. I wanted to do something similar to that piece but with backgrounds. So for water, I drew the koi fish circling in the pond. This is also a direct reference to a key moment in the season 1 finale; one of my favourite scenes in the show.
I didn't take a picture of my sketch for the badgermole, unfortunately, but it was pretty much the same as the one above.
For the dragon, I decided to draw a full dragon instead of just the head.
This was what my full sketch looked like! I initially wanted to put the title in the middle, but felt it was too much, so I removed it in the end. Of all the pieces I've done, this sketch took the longest amount of time by far. The amount of details, and the proper scaling was a challenge, but I was so relieved when I finally got to this stage.
Time for my favourite part - outlining!
I don't know what it is about outlining, but it's just so satisfying to do.
Since I was gonna be painting, I should mention that the marker I used to outline is waterproof. It seems pretty obvious, but trust me, you forget things when you're trying out something new.
I didn't really know how to position the symbol for Air, so it ended up like this. I think it still looked okay though.
Next step: cleanup! By that I mean erasing the pencil markings.
You'll notice that the fins of the koi fish are outlined here; I used a thinner marker for that, but it's not waterproof. Don't worry that was intentional (sort of).
Next was painting!
I actually made a few mistakes with the water one, and I really didn't like how the lily turned out, but I think it didn't diminish the main focus which was the water symbol (which I really liked) and the fish.
The badgermole turned out pretty good at least. The colours were well blended, and I did the fur outline after painting with the thinner marker.
The dragon I was kinda iffy about colour-wise, since the inside of the wings aren't supposed to be that brown, but overall it looked alright. My colours were quite limited since my watercolour set was the basic one with the circles (i.e. it wasn't in tubes that you could squeeze and mix).
Sorry for the lighting in this one; I basically pulled an all-nighter outlining and painting this piece. Well, my sleep cycle was really screwed up at the time, so I ended up finishing this at 11am the next day. Welp.
That face pretty much sums it up.
Here's the full piece in its final form!
I was so happy with how this turned out. This was the first piece I was super psyched about and one which I could definitely call a masterpiece. It's definitely an accomplishment, especially for a novice artist like me. And I'm so glad it was well received on the AtLA subreddit as well!
Avatar the Last Airbender is a truly fantastic show; the characters are so well-written, the story is engaging, and the animation is top-notch, especially for a show that is 15 years old! If you like animated series with humour and action, definitely check it out!
Sorry this was a long one! But thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
