Bila the Radiant | Splinterlands Art Contest Week 257!

Took a break from doing art requests and draw something I want for today. What I want to draw is Bila the Radiant for Splinterlands Art Contest Week 257!. Looking through the splintercards always gives me a feeling of a fun challenge, something I want to draw that I've never tried before. This time I chose Bila since she caught my attention with her radiant aura (definitely lives up to her name). Also when I saw her, I immediately had an idea on how I will draw her.

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Reference

Bila the Radiant

Illustration Process

Sketches

We have my usual blue and red sketches here where the blue one is the general idea and then proceeded to the red sketch where I sketch the general details for my drawing. I don't usually sketch the hair all the way but I did on this work since it would be overlapping some parts of the character and I want to envision the hair kind of freely floating more so I have the idea of the flow in my line art.

Line art

I don't know how to do a semi-realistic hair yet if it's not by strand like what I did on Lux Vega's hair so I just did what I want here and put as many lines as I like to create the flow. I'm not so good at anatomy yet to I know there are flaws in this drawing's body proportion but I have a very high pride so I don't use reference lol (I want to learn it on my own). Got to burn my brain and find out how to draw poses. I also realize I don't have to take the hands and arms too seriously since it would be covered by light later on during coloring.

Base Color

I had a little bit of hard time on how I will color the hair and the gold parts since they are both yellow so I just used a slightly lighter yellow for the hair and a brighter yellow for the gold since it would be shiny later on. It's also my first time coloring a different shade of skin so I was excited as well as doubtful if I can present her color well.

Shading

For this part, I used two layer of multiply mode like I usually do but for the hair part since it doesn't look like a shade using the base color, I had to adjust and choose a darker shade for it. For the other part, multiply works just fine so I don't have to adjust the pen's color. What I do for shading, btw, is applying the color and then just blurring it manually later on to blend.

Lighting

Same thing with shading, two layers for lighting but I used two different modes. I used add and add(glow) mode. Add for the general lightings and add(glow) for the more shiny parts. Similar to my blending in shading, I also use blur tool in this part. My favorite part is the face and the legs, those are both just satisfying for me and very proud of it.

Effects

Lastly, I have added the other details of Bila such as her scale-like part of her skin and the yellow glow on her face. I also used a very dark orange for the background instead of going pure black since it makes my character more radiant. I also did shade the character overall and added glow on her eyes and face. For the hands and the radiant energy, I used add(glow) as well while using soft air brush with yellow paint. I also used a circle ruler and applied the same to her hands but with white paint.

Actually did this in one sitting all night. I was feeling lazy before I start to draw and then worked all night when I started because I was having so much fun. I really really love how I did with the face TvT. The eyes, the nose, and the lips are just perfect for me. I'm in love with my drawing, I hope you are too🤣