Greetings! I started working on this since the first day of the contest, but due to my schedule I’ve been drawing a few hours from week to week. Since we can only post 3 entries, I would like to present 3 versions of the same drawing: day, sunset and night. You can find the full resolution version of these drawings in this Drive Folder and later on my ArtStation account.
I’ve chosen winter because it’s my favourite season, but I didn’t want to draw the tipical dark and cold scene, at least not at first. A few days later of the contest start, I watched on Disney Plus the episode “Spring” of ‘Mickey Mouse Shorts’ (season 4, episode 14) and the snowy backgrounds were an inspiration for my drawing. I love the art style of that series, so as a challenge for myself I tried to replicate it.
I started testing with the default resources of Krita (4.4.2) and then combining it with ‘GDquest Brush Pack’ and the latest ‘AirBrush Pack’ by Ramón Miranda. At the end I got a “collection” of dry and hard brushes (chalk, airbrush and splat texture mostly) that were pretty useful.
For the canvas, I have to thank Ramón Miranda for his ‘Smart Canvas Template’. I used the watercolor version and, with some adjustments, I applied it to everything except the characters and the sky using a transparency mask. At first I was going to fill the full canvas, but I wanted to try something different. If Krita or Huion find my drawing useful, they can put it like a huge sticker wherever they need. If a PNG transparent file it’s against the rules, please, let me know, I also have standar JPG versions. And this is an old sketch from the first day:
With the characters I wanted to keep their original shapes because I really like their electronic style. I downloaded various official desings of Kiki to study her forms and clothes and the result is a mix of styles with a “techno” winter coat for her. Huion only needs his cape. I used standard and basic brushes for the lineart, color and the airbrush_soft for the shadows.
To end this long text, the reason behind the 3 versions it’s because I wanted to draw a sunny winter scene instead of a dark one. But, while I was mixing colors for the sky, I was curious and tried to draw an aurora borealis (for the first time) and I tried different technics, but in the end I choose the “stylized” version. With the sunset version, I wanted to play with complementary colors and give a warm feeling.
And that would be a somewhat long summary of the development of my drawing. I hope you like it and don’t hesitate to let me know if there is an error with my post and my entry for the contest.
EDITS: Grammar and modification of the ‘Night’ version.