In between the time where the oil is burned and the sun breaks, the followers of the mighty Wo-Owl rejoice as the magic is summoned in the witching hour. The entity comes, mighty yet humbling, as it grants its promised wishes of acknowledgement and fame to those who manage to catch its attention.

Hello, everyone! This is my entry for Hive account@perennial's contest to celebrate the reveal of #steem-cartoon's new logo, The Wo-Owl!

#Steem-cartoon

It's the community both Hive account@perennial and Hive account@sireh started to bring together the creative Malaysian talent so that not only would they get recognition but to also provide a way to earn directly. I've been very lucky to have been in this community, as not only does my work get recognition and feedback but I also have been able to find so many hidden talented gems both locally and globally.

So when Hive account@cartoonistpandan released the design for logo of this community, I was beyond overjoyed because the design absolutely adorable and really fits the night owl lifestyle most of us subscribe too (I'm looking you guys that post 4 - 5 a.m. Malaysian time). Not only is the design absolutely amazing but I can it being super versatile! (I want a t-shirt and maybe a couple of jewelry based on this cutie haha).

Anyways, onto the drawing!

In The Beginning...

As Hive account@nanawawa mentioned in her entry, both of us had the initial idea of creating something based off of masquerades (I personally blame Labyrinth. May you rest in peace, Goblin King) and well, we had to improvise.

My first idea after that was to create an owl queen. The queen of owls. I liked the sound of that but alas, it was not to be as it was an idea I fiercely fought with in the sketching process. It was not going to happen (at least, right now) so I had to move on this second take, which is the drawing below! Yay!

Now I would typically show my sketch below my lineart and flat colors but I have a bit of a surprise in the end on how I incorporated the logo into this drawing.

So my idea ended up being an owl witch summoning the owl entity that is Wo-owl to call for its assistance. The inspiration behind this was the very long distance relationship between a creative and an early bed time as well as how the #steem-cartoon community is like an entity formed from the collective hardwork of everyone involved. It's a fantastical twist of the relationship, you could say.

Sun and Moon

One of the key things I wanted to portray was how this witch probably stayed up really late till the really wee hours of the morning to summon Wo-Owl. I had drawn the witch to have some eye bags but I also had to make sure both the sun and the moon were in the drawing. I did a couple adjustments for the placement of the sun and moon. At first I wanted to leave that bottom window pretty barren and plain but gotta be a little extra today.

Also, in the end, I hid the summoning circle because I wasn't too happy about the placement. I'll be coming back to it later when everything else around it comes to place.

The Witch

I did my first round of soft shading around the gradient. An eraser doesn't just remove but is a drawing tool as well, so I used that in my shading this time. I simply erased the parts where the light would touch. I call it lazy shading but it can be quite tedious as well haha.

I didn't feel there wasn't enough oomph! in the shadows so I added a tiny bit of my regular cell-shading method. As for the light on the character, soft brush on normal layer. The cloth flying around her arms was done in a separate group and had a different opacity. I'm happy with how that came out. I think it gave a bit more of that reaction needed to summoning.

Play With A Little Fire

Floating candles still need to be lit. So I did the usual colour choices for the fire. But I thought I could do something a little different with it. This is a fantasy setting afterall. I played around with a colour overlay and the hue/saturation adjustment layer. It gave this pretty cool warm, ghostly colour combo so I rolled with it!

In addition to that, I added an outer glow to the fire because why not? Maybe the candles are floating because of ghosts, who knows...

Add A Little Magic

What's a witch without her magic? Time to go really ham on the outer glow. I readded the summoning circle again. Wo-Owl makes its appearance in all its glowing glory. Probably had some red bull on its way to be summoned since it now has wings.

Now Some Photoshop Magic

To add depth, I used Gaussian blur on the candles since they were done in a separate group and layer (planning is important too, yo!). I added a bit of a bokeh-ish effect near the candles. It's not the prettiest but I think it does add something in the end. And since this is digital, I used a bit of colour correcting and playing with the level curves (yay, digital!) My final step is doing my regular outer blur effect to get the final image.

The Reveal

Okay, I mentioned how versatile the logo is, so as a little extra challenge to myself and a friendly competition between myself and Hive account@serarious as to many Wo-Owl we can fit in our drawing entries.

I count around 12 (counting each side of the wallpaper pattern as an owl). Your move, Sera >=D

Mini competition aside, it took a bit of creativity for me to find out the many ways to incorporate the logo into the drawing. The lace and window are my favourites (and also the most time consuming to line). And so, that's basically my process for this drawing. Really liking the entries so far and I encourage all reading to try it out before it ends! 8D