Among all the NFT drawings I've done for Spice project, there are three drawings I enjoyed most. These drawings are Medusa, the male angel and this female angel. I always love to draw something devilish, fierce, and badass. I was thinking of drawing a female version of a warrior angel so I drew this angel.
SKETCH
I already have her hairstyle in mind when I saw the pose in the reference I picked so I came up with the idea that fierce and elegant look will suit her. Her big wings is my way of making the background easy to conceptualize so I won't think of what to put anymore. I made the wings a bit folded for a change. In the reference, the subject is holding a sword. In my version, I want her to have a complete gear so I added a shield. This is also my way of incorporating chilis since it is required in Spice project. I figured that it would be suitable to add on a shield. For the sword, I'm thinking of a cross for the design of its handle since angels are holy creatures. It would therefore be suitable to associate the cross to this angel. I made her outfit simple because the deadline is drawing near and I don't have enough time to draw complex designs so I just came up with a two-layered dress.
LINEART
The lineart is starting to show the fierce look I am thinking of. The biggest factor is in the eyes. I designed her eyes out of parallelogram shape and I made it pointed a bit upwards. Aside from her big wings, I applied a windy effect on her dress to make it spread as the wind blows to occupy space in the background. This will also reduce my struggle in conceptualizing the background. This also matches her hair that is blown by the wind as well. I started to form her lips here and gave it a shape that suits my plan to put a lipstick on her when I start coloring.
BASE COLORS
I was thinking of a red, black, and gold combination for this angel to give her the fierce and elegant look I am thinking of. I came up with red wings to give her a unique look. I decided to make her a red angel to make her look fierce and come up with this outfit to make her look elegant. To make things unique again, I decided to make black dominate her weapons especially the shield instead of the usual golden weapons we see in warrior angels. For her lips, I want a color that will match her fierce and elegant look but won't make her look like an antagonist at the same time so I decided to choose a ligher shade of her wings. I chose dusty rose pink for her lipstick. Since I made the wings occupy the background, it's the part I struggled most in drawing and coloring. It's the biggest part of the drawing. It consumed most of my time but it's all worth it because I'm very happy with the result as I see that the color combinations I have in mind made a satisfying match on my first try. I added the gradient effects for the final touch of the base colors.
SHADING
Basically, I focused on putting shadows and highlights in this process to add volume to the drawing. I applied both cel shading and blending techniques here to create a balance between the sharp and soft shades. Since this is anime style drawing, I focused on cel shading on the hair and lips for a sharp look. Then I did a very slight blending on the skin. I used blending technique on the rest of the drawing, especially on the wings where soft texture is most suitable. This process was able to bring out the nice color combination of the hair and eyes that go well with the black, gold, and crimson theme. The contrast turned out well.
BACKGROUND
Background is the part I struggle most of the time, especially when there is a big space left for it. I find it hard to think of details suitable for the subject but thanks to the huge wings, it saved me a lot of time doing the background so the wings are worth all the effort. Since the wings alone make the drawing as well as the background attractive, I just put simple gradient and a little grainy texture on the background. I chose pink, yellow, and purple combinations to match this crimson angel. It gave a heavenly and elegant look.
FINAL RESULT
I finished the drawing with light, rays, and sparkles to add a bit of heavenly look to match her elegant and fierce warrior style. I played with opacity for a translucent look and I used the Gaussian Blur effect to add a glow effect to to these final touches. This is one of the last three drawings I did for Spice NFT project. I love saving the best for the last and this is one of my top three favorites among my drawings. It may be a tedious artwork but I enjoyed it a lot and I got so excited when I finished the drawing, seeing that I achieved exactly what I want. This fierce and elegant angel is one of my first few works that got sold in the first two hours of Spice NFT launching. I thank the person who bought this art. I have more artworks to share in the next few weeks once I'm done with all the pending art commissions I'm working on.