This could be a participation for the weekly contest, but I have something else going on.

Hello everyone, today I present to you an artwork that I was working on even before the fight scene between Franz Ruffmane and Lichen Beast, but I kept postponing it because I wasn't happy with the result. Also, as mentioned above, this will not be the artwork that I will submit as my entry for the Splinterlands weekly contest, as I am working on something interesting for this week, although I hope to be able to finish this in time before Saturday.

"But today, it is time to witness the maximum representative of the Sun God of Dragons, the Helios Matriarch, the ruler of this Church, formerly known by her name, Rosa Phireth, who to this day is the youngest Matriarch selected to lead the believers of Helios and is therefore worthy to wield Ataraxia, the staff gifted by God himself to the first Matriarch, lifting it high to convey security and authority, showing her direct connection to divinity."

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Tools:

Gaomon S620
Photoshop
Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

🔰Process🔰

_Reference

-Step 1:

As the representative of the Sun God of the Dragons, Rosa Phireth needed a pose that would express her status within the Church of Helios, reflecting a bit of the lore scene where the Matriarch meets with the crowd. Therefore, the camera perspective would be what those who witnessed the purification by fire sent through the Matriarch saw.

-Step 2:

As usual, I used grayscale values to give the first hints of volume and detail to the character's silhouette, and then added saturation with a layer set to "color" blending mode, quickly getting closer to the color palette shown in the character's official illustration.

-Step 3:

Then I continued working hard on the detailed clothing of the Matriarch, placing special emphasis on the ornaments and metal pieces present in her outfit. To achieve this, it was necessary to increase the contrast of the colors that had already been applied, in order to have a greater visual impact and prevent the character from getting lost in the warm color gradient that had been added to the background.

-Step 4:

At this point, I started to notice some posture errors that had been carried over from the initial sketch. As I mentioned earlier, I had set aside this illustration for a couple of weeks, and upon returning to it with a fresh mind, I realized that some things needed to be changed. One of the most notable changes was to the tail and legs. In particular, the way the legs were positioned, with the Matriarch's legs wide open, did not match the calm and dignified expression on her face that evokes devotion. Therefore, I adhered to the character design, reduced the lower part of the dress, brought her legs closer together, and improved the shape of her tail in the process.

-Step 5:

I had forgotten to talk about the fire that would later cleanse the dragonborn heretic, and to talk about it, it is also necessary to say that I didn't like the position of the hand previously, as it seemed like the Matriarch was waving, so I rotated her palm to be in communion with the fire emanating from her hand. For this, I used the Smudge tool a lot to blend the different colors that glow in it. As for the other arm, it wasn't fair that the dragon guardian's staff didn't have any prominence at all, so I repositioned the right arm so that it could hold the staff up high, leveling its importance with the blue fire.

I will leave you a GIF with the whole process on it, so you can better appreciate the illustration process.