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Raise your hammer to the sky

Hello Hivers, hello @Radaquest players, are you ready for a new piece of art for the Radaquest Art Contest? I'm coming in strong. I've spent the last two days putting the pencil to the graphic tablet to bring this artwork to life on time. Yes, the contest lasts two weeks, but I always end up drawing at the last minute.

She is Ivonne "Divine Hammer," and as a tribute to her name, I've tried to showcase the power of that hammer, emitting energy into the air with just a swing. This character has a strong resemblance to Mighty Thor, the female Thor from comics and movies, so I've been holding back from painting Mjolnir. But let me clarify that, despite using Ivonne's hammer from the Radaquest art as a reference, I did draw inspiration from Marvel's Mjolnir for this artwork. It's just easier to depict a hammer with a rectangular shape and odd angles.

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Tools:

Gaomon S620
Photoshop
Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

🔰Process🔰

_Reference

-Step 1:

I've been searching for poses of characters wielding hammers since it's more common to find people holding swords. But hammers tend to swing differently due to their mass concentration. After searching and searching, I found this amazing pose, mainly because it's somewhat challenging to draw. And when it comes to making myself suffer while drawing, you know I'm quite the expert at it. So, I didn't hesitate to take it and draw the pose over and over until it looked right. Then, when it came to coloring, I paid special attention to the background. I wanted it to be a harmonious composition with those arches delineating the shape of the character and establishing a strong light source with the moon.

-Step 2:

Since I wanted to focus on color treatment with a cold atmosphere, this time I changed my workflow. Instead of dividing the elements of the character into layers while applying the base colors, I worked as if I were using grayscale. I used blending modes like "overlay," "color," and "soft light" to apply new color tones influenced by the blue ambiance.

-Step 3:

As I was detailing the elements of the character, I had to focus on the face because it was looking odd. You can't see it here, but check out the gif below, and you'll see how I shaped the face. I had to search on Pinterest for "woman's face in 3/4 view" to find reference images for Ivonne's face. But it wasn't easy to find a reference that offered me the exact pose I was looking for because typically, faces in 3/4 view are tilted downwards, and I needed her to look upwards. So just finding references took me a few minutes, and then improving the face took much longer. But I managed to create a face that will look great even if you apply the mirror effect, so all that time was worth it, and that makes me happy 😊

-Step 4:

For the background, I wanted to create a kind of medieval village, so I worked on a couple of houses to make them look good. However, I wasn't going to spend hours detailing every inch of the house because you know I always have the Gaussian blur trick up my sleeve, and I never hesitate to use it. Seriously, it saves so much time doing it this way because these houses are just meant to accompany the character and don't need to stand out too much. That's why the moon will remain just a white circle in the final artwork.

-Step 5:

It's time to pull out the Gaussian blur filter trick! Haha, but I had already warned you that I would use it. But first, I got to work on the hammer, which for aesthetic reasons, I made larger than the original, and for symmetry's sake, I discarded its original shape and made it more rectangular (more similar to Mjolnir). I was about to make it a two-handed hammer, but I thought that would deviate too much from the original design, so I decided to forget about painting Ivonne's other arm. Yes, with the excuse of making her hair super long, I forgot that I had to paint her other arm😶🤫 But if you only just noticed that now because I'm telling you, I'll consider it an innocent mistake. But let me know if you had noticed it before in the comments.

Wish me luck in the contest! I'm afraid they'll announce the winners while I'm writing this post, so I probably won't even be considered for the podium for arriving so late 😖😖

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