Short and Sweet WTF

Last time I posted my very first pixel art (though not finished in that order) and today I’m sharing my second! Which started as a simple practice piece to help me do the sky and mountains in Dream Haven, but the blue colors and gradient reminded me of the ocean, and so I added some rocks, and then was like, “hey, a mermaid would look really good there” and things just escalated from there. Anyway, here she is.

Figure drawing (humans anyway) isn’t my strong suit, but I think it came out pretty ok actually. Here’s a collage of the finished piece and snapshots from various stages during the process:

All in all, this took me 77 hours and 58 minutes, which is a definite improvement from Dream Haven, which took 122 hours and 38 minutes. I’m super happy with the finished piece, too, though I also love the simple version from the bottom right of the collage. Here’s the full view on the one:

I could very well have stopped there, but I’m glad I didn’t. I’m happy to have the two different versions of the piece because they both showcase different things that I practiced and learned from.

Here’s some of the things I practiced/learned from this piece:

• Patience is a virtue! One that I sometimes have in short supply 🤣
• Rocks
• Gradients
• Never ever use the pin light blend mode when doing pixel art. It makes a huge, horrible mess of things. Gradient maps are better for adjusting colors.

That’s all I’ve got for now. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time!