Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings 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, and lets me track my progress too!
We're chugging along with my Linktober Series, now on Day 27 - Fairy! If you can't recall, this Linktober challenge is a spinoff of the monthly art challenge, Inktober, where there's a daily prompt and you're supposed to do an ink drawing everyday based on said prompt!
Source: Linktober Tumblr
Unfortunately, I joined this challenge a little late, so I only started at day 20 and tried my best to keep up the streak to the end of the month. So far so good, but it was definitely a challenge doing a piece a day since I draw pretty slowly, but I tried my best!
Anyway, for day 27, Fairy was a pretty simple prompt, since there are so many kinds of fairies in the Zelda universe. But the first one whom came to mind was definitely the Great Fairies from Breath of the Wild! There are 4 of them in BotW, each residing in their own Great Fairy Fountain hidden throughout Hyrule, and they have some very unique designs.
Source: Attackofthefanboy
I was considering which of the 4 Great Fairies to draw because they all look so beautiful but I figured since Cotera was the first Great Fairy I met in BotW, I'd make this piece a tribute to her.
So the next question was what pose to draw her in? Initially I wanted to draw her as she normally poses in her fountain when you talk to her, as such:
Source: TheGamer
And I tried my best to replicate it but it just didn't turn out well, sadly.
I was thinking of how else I could draw her until I saw this concept art of Cotera and I absolutely loved her pose here!
Source: Great Sea Journal - Tumblr
I know they don't actually do this pose in-game, but I felt like her pose here showcased her design off the best. And since I couldn't draw human figures well, it was also a shortcut for me to just trace her pose from here, which was exactly what I did!
Here's my sketch! I didn't really like how her eyes looked, so I went with simpler-looking facial features.
I'm so glad I found that concept art because there was absolutely no way I would be able to draw Cotera this well for sure. And after cleaning up and outlining, here's the final sketch!
Next it was time to get colouring! Cotera's design actually has quite a lot of colours, and with this piece I was planning I knew colouring would be a huge time sink, so I'm glad the sketching process was pretty quick since I traced her.
I also used the concept art photo for colour sourcing, as well as a few other fanarts I saw online. But dang, the beauty of digital art! It's so easy to get any colour you want!
Colouring is definitely one of my favourite things to do though. And the concept art made things like shadows easy too, so it was pretty much a no-brainer since I'm literally replicating it. I especially loved colouring the butterfly wings behind her ear. That pastel rainbow colour is so pretty!
Next it was time to colour in the rest of the piece! I made it pretty simple with her fountain and the background since Cotera herself is the main focus. And I know I said I was only gonna colour in the main prompt but it looked so incomplete with the background just white so I decided to go for it.
I colour sourced the fountain from this awesome fanart I found from Dragonbeak on Deviantart:
Source: Deviantart
The colours they used were so lovely I figured it was easier to just colour source from this piece, so here we go!
I think my flower could've been drawn better, but I was getting really tired of working on this since colouring Cotera actually took me quite a lot of time already so I just left it the way it was.
I wanted to keep the background simple, but still be colourful and eventually I got this!
And the finishing touches - the glow around the fountain itself!
This piece actually took me a few days and I just abandoned following the challenge since I wanted my art pieces to look good, and I have big ideas for all my pieces. I just accepted that I'm not skilled enough to complete the pieces I have in mind in a single day (considering my other commitments). As the dude from Toy Story said, "you can't rush art". So I'm just gonna take my time with these and I think it's already paying off! If I had rushed to complete this piece in 1 day I definitely wouldn't have been able to draw this as well as I did.
I actually really loved how this piece came out! Especially with Cotera's outlines and all the colours! This quickly became one of my favourite pieces that I've ever done! It took me quite a lot of time and I don't even know how many layers I ended up with but I'm glad I spent as much time as I did and finally completed it! I hope you like this piece as much as I do!
I actually posted this on the BotW subreddit too and got over 100 upvotes! Probably should've watermarked it sooner but I always forget. I think it was safe though.
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
