Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings 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!
This was another free artwork redemption over on my twitch channel, where viewers can use their channel points they've hoarded over the course of watching my streams to claim free art from me!
This request was made by Mel, one of my moderators on Twitch! She's nice to everyone and super sweet and the most wholesome person in my chat so I was more than happy to fulfill her request! She's made a couple of requests before and this time was one of the biggest pieces yet! I believe her exact words were "Taco and her mods at the pool". I thought it was super sweet of her to include everyone on our mod team and after all their support I was more than happy to do this! It sounded kinda fun and fitting then too she redeemed this last summer.
So for this piece I got inspired by a couple of summer pics I saw from LINE Friends a while back and I went off of that style since I wanted something bright and colourful for a summer themed piece, and there were a lot of characters to include for all the mods as well.
This was one of my first drafts as I figured out who to put where, and how to draw the rest of the mods who didn't have an OC. I also wanted to include the bots we use like Nightbot and Streamelements since they're really useful and we use it a lot. Technically they are mods as well after all. When I saw the Nightbot logo I thought he'd be perfect as a server to serve drinks which tied into the piece really well!
Initially I thought of putting Mel and I front and centre but then I changed to her relaxing on a float. Since the mods are always in the background on streams I guess it works. I also included my mods who are not as active on streams anymore for posterity's sake since they were a big part of my journey back in the day.
It took a loooong time to even get to this step since there were so many characters to include especially for my mod Nightsy who has 2 OCs, one as a wolf and one as a human. My mod Akuji's OC is a zombie and to make things easier I drew him as a zombie with a ducky float and snorkel in reference to Plants vs Zombies (which is a game both of us really enjoy).
I thought sketching was bad, but outlining wasn't much easier either since I always strive for clean bold outlines in my pieces. Actually the characters were kinda fine, but the perspective on the pool was what gave me a lot of trouble, especially the side lines. This will be rectified later though and tbh I wished I had just thought of removing it sooner so I wouldn't have to waste so much time on it.
Once I finished the outline the real fun begins - colouring! I knew the thing with the most detail was going to be the summer drinks I wanted to include so I started with that first.
For the drinks, I referenced them from stickers I found online that were made from the drinks in Genshin Impact! Since Mel plays it a lot (and I used to as well), I thought they'd be perfect especially since they're pretty colourful. But the in-game ones were a little too realistic for the cartoony style I was going for so I chose to reference the stickers instead.
It took a while but I got it and then it was pretty smooth sailing from there as I coloured the background and the characters. I also realised I should've drawn Mel on a cake float instead of a flamingo float since her Twitch name is Mel_on_cake! I felt so stupid that I didn't think of it sooner! But after I drew it I felt like it wasn't as good as the flamingo since I wasn't sure how else to draw it except flat.
It was only after I coloured in the background that I realised I didn't know how to fill in the sides and it looked kinda awkward to have grass just beside the pool. Then I decided maybe I don't actually need the sides of the pool and it actually looked so much better! The perspective may be a little off but I thought it was okay, so this was the final piece!
And this is the version with the flamingo float which I thought was really nice as well.
This piece took a really long time and although I was excited about it at first but by the end I was definitely very relieved to have it done! And I was pretty proud of it too! Here's the 30 second timelapse:
If you're interested, I do draw on stream sometimes and you can even claim free artwork if you get enough channel points! We also play lots of interactive games so come hang out with us on my Twitch channel!
That's all for now! Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
