Art Attack! #15: Avatar Symbolism

Hey Hive!

We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my paintings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!

The piece I'm sharing today is a simple one I did based on Avatar: The Last Airbender! Which is fitting for all the attention it's getting these days.

If you've never seen the show, Avatar: The Last Airbender is an American animated television series created by Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino. It aired on Nickelodeon for three seasons, from February 2005 to July 2008. Avatar is set in an Asiatic-like world in which some people can manipulate the classical elements with psychokinetic variants of the Chinese martial arts known as "bending".

It primarily follows the protagonists, 12-year-old Aang and his friends, who must bring peace and harmony to the world by ending the Fire Nation's war with the rest of the Four Nations.

Ever since I first watched the show back in 2008 or so, I've always been a fan of Avatar: The Last Airbender (AtLA). And I've actually already shared an Avatar-related piece about 2 months ago, but since I made my bf watch the whole series again on Netflix recently, I had another idea for a simple piece I could do.

This was the other Avatar painting I did btw:

Speaking of Avatar being on Netflix, I think there was a sudden surge of interest for the show now that it finally made it onto Netflix US. And I'm so glad that the show is getting so much love even now; 12 years after it ended. But with the love for AtLA comes some inevitable hate for the sequel, Legend of Korra. I've watched both shows multiple times, and I can admit that AtLA is superior in most aspects, but LoK has its moments too. Ultimately, I think people shouldn't compare the 2 because other than them sharing the same universe and some characters, they're really different shows, for different audiences.

But I digress. My bf said that he doesn't remember ever watching the show completely so in October 2019, we started a rewatch together! And during that rewatch, I realised that there are a lot of different symbols in Avatar. So, I decided to group them together and make a minimalistic piece out of them!

I had kind of a card-like image in mind, and this was my sketch:

Time to outline!

Sorry the picture looks slanted, it's straighter irl.

The characters in the middle represent the elements themselves. Earth, Fire, Air, and Water. FYI, they're actually very close to the actual Chinese words (except water)! I followed the Korra sequence this time, since I did the original sequence is my last piece.

The symbols in the top right are the elemental symbols, because you don't actually see the characters themselves much in the show (other than the opening introduction).

And the symbols in the bottom left represent each of the 4 nations. The Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, Air Nomads, and Water Tribes.

For the colour I decided to go for an ombre style watercolour. I had never tried painting ombre before this, and I actualy kind of screwed it up a little bit for the water, because I blended too much.

But I tried my best to fix it, and this was the end result:

I think it turned out pretty good actually, considering it was my first time with this colour style. I like the minimalist look to it, and I tried my best at calligraphy for the center characters.

All in all, I really liked this piece! It's definitely going up on my wall next time for sure!

Thanks so much for reading!