As someone who really loves watching other artists make art, I get bursts of inspiration from others' works. Sometimes I want to draw cyberpunk-inspired drawings. Sometimes steampunk. Most of the time, fantasy.
But, well, I'm really bad at concepts, so I have to take this initiative really slowly, but surely.
The Stressed
I don't know how to call the lady in this drawing except that she's The Stressed. I slightly based off the pose from this portrait, and then just generally played around with her by adding different accessories.
In my head, I named her Scheherazade. Since learning of this name (and character) from The Thousand and One Nights, I really liked it already.
The story of Scheherazade
The context of the story starts with King Shahryar, who loathes women because of his previous wife's infidelity. Everyday, he marries a new woman, and then gets her killed by the end of the day. At one point, Scheherazade was offered to be his wife.
Scheherazade is smart and is a natural storyteller. To postpone getting herself discarded by the King, she tells him interesting stories each night that she often leaves on a hanging note. The suspense of not hearing how the story finishes piques the curiosity and interest of the King, so he doesn't instruct to get Scheherazade killed.
For one thousand nights, Scheherazade tells the King a story, and by the one thousand first night, she told him she had no more stories to tell. But the King has since fallen in love with Scheherazade, and he makes her his queen.
Drawing The Stressed
So I called the lady in this drawing Scheherazade because I love the name and the story behind it. There is also some kind of fantastical ring to the name, so it kind of stuck with me while drawing her.
The plan was to draw a simple portrait based off the Pinterest reference, but I was really intrigued if I could challenge myself with more details. More details meant more patience, and I'm sure a lot of people who know me would agree that I am quite the impatient individual.
I really enjoyed drawing the sketch, and went all out with the details. This, despite knowing full well that I might fall short when I start coloring.
The drawing took me almost 7 hours spread over a couple of days to finish. I kept repeating the colors time and time again, before I settled with just "I don't care anymore, just let me finish this."
I contemplated drawing lineart, but ended up scrapping the idea. If I want to learn to digitally paint without lineart on the final work, then I have to start somewhere.
Details
- Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
- Apps:
- MediBang Paint for Android
- Snapseed for Android
- Brushes:
- Sketch: pencil (100%)
- Base: watercolor (100%)
- Colors: watercolor; pen; pencil
- Others: blur; smudge
I may or may not have abused the Gaussian blur filter yet again. Hahaha. Also, I was really supposed to draw the butterfly, too, but I ended up not including it anymore. Instead, I added in little bits of fireflies-like glows surrounding her.
Timelapse
Featured by Ko-fi
The day I signed up at Ko-fi, I uploaded a few of my works. Roughly four hours later, I received this email:
And that meant a lot to me! The work featured was that of the portrait drawing I did of Aiyana Lewis, which I also shared here on Hive. That just really boosted my confidence and desire to improve myself.
Last week, the piece was also featured on Ko-fi's official Instagram, and man, I never felt prouder of myself. Haha. Anyway, I'm on Instagram, too, so let me know if you are and I'll drop by. :)
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