Let's go underwater again🌊

Definitely, I've been determined to paint nothing but aquatic characters these past few days. How are you all doing, friends? I'm glad to see you here once again. Today's subject is an octopus, but a humanoid one with great displays of power, so forget all those dishes you had in mind, because you might end up being fish food yourself.

Today it's Anasth Soothsayer's turn, one of the first characters from the Rebellion set that was introduced. I wanted to paint her because she was truly a challenge for me. I usually draw girls, and Anasth is one, but she has an octopus-like face, with no nose or mouth. My goal was to make her look imposing and powerful, but also to give her a feminine touch despite her eyes full of fury and her tentacles covering half of her face.

Play Splinterlands Now❕

Tools:

Gaomon S620
Photoshop
Brushes courtesy of Imad Awan: Download here

🔰Process🔰

_Reference

-Step 1:

You know that I always like to play with the angles of the characters and maintain a sense of depth between the elements of my paintings, and this was not going to be the exception. I placed Anasth's power ball in the bottom left corner of the canvas to have plenty of free space to paint the character and make her look majestic while showing off her tentacles.

-Step 2:

With the "pen" tool, I selected each individual element of the composition and shaped it using different layers. In fact, if you look closely, you'll see that each tentacle has a different color. I did this to easily locate them within the painting file and thus be more efficient when painting.

-Step 3:

I haven't changed the color of the tentacles yet. I decided to keep them like this for now and focus on detailing them, aiming to make their shape look cylindrical and flexible. Later on, I have adjusted their color using the "Match Color" tool in Photoshop, which can be found under Image > Adjustments > Match Color. This allowed me to quickly have all the tentacles the same color, although sometimes I still need to make some adjustments to ensure the colors are correct.

-Step 4:

I wanted to have four layers of depth in the composition, so in addition to the power ball, the character, and the ocean, I added a couple of ruined columns. It was something simple and without too much detail, but it adds quite a visual impact to the illustration if you're not looking for every brushstroke to be extremely detailed. So please, don't zoom in 😅

-Step 5:

For me, the highlight of the final piece is the ball floating there in the corner of the frame. Initially, it was only surrounded by a white power with an outer glow, but I wanted to make it more interesting. So, I added some more radiant colors to this flow of power, and in the process, I managed to make it look less insubstantial than the powers being thrown in the air. Since Anasth is underwater, I tried to make her powers look thick, as if they were some substance thicker than water. And of course, the final touch was a Gaussian blur to keep the viewer's attention on the main character.

Zoom