Warden of the Dark Woods: Topsfield Fair Entry 2022

Welcome back to a retrospective of my entries to the Topsfield Fair, except this week is not much of a look back, since we’ve caught up to this year’s entry. I started making this picture in August, and I won’t lie: my August sucked, mainly due to the circumstances around my car. But I still wanted to submit a picture to the fair, and I wanted to get a bit more ambitious with my digital art. Thus, here we have “Warden of the Dark Woods”.

Since the Topsfield Fair mostly occurs in early October, I had wanted to make a spookier picture for the fair for a couple of years. And at the time, I recently whipped up a potential new character to play for Dungeons and Dragons (a game I only started playing last year) who visually resembles a witch.

Kiri Padparadscha (first name is decided, last name could be changed) is a Cleric of a small sisterhood devoted to the spirit of the Samhain season. Her sisterhood is suspected by some of being witches due to their garb, though others don’t mind their presence since they seem to avoid harming the people. Kiri mostly chuckles off the witch accusations, though she doesn’t deny them. Kiri is the second-youngest of four in this sisterhood, and the others took up domains one in our world could easily associate with Halloween: Twilight (oldest), Grave (second-oldest), and Trickery (youngest). Kiri’s sisters question her decision to represent the Light domain. Kiri, however, knows that Samhain ushers in a time of great darkness and cold. Thus, Kiri chose her domain (approved by the spirits of the season) to become a source of light and warmth to drive away whatever cold, dark forces threaten the people.

After watching Breadsword's video discussing the Disney movie The Black Cauldron which called it a “Halloween masterpiece”, I wanted to try making a D&D character who could represent Halloween (or Samhain) in an off-beat way. One of my big ideas was being able to cast fire magic out of a Jack-O-Lantern, but I didn’t strictly want the character to be a Wizard. (For those who don’t know, D&D has several different magic classes, and they each cast in different ways.) Hearing about the idea of children using carved-out vegetables (like gourds and turnips) to hold candles which light their way through the night, I thought about that fire and light being a protective force. Clerics are typically thought to be a support class in D&D, and the Light Domain subclass adds some fire spells Clerics wouldn’t normally learn (such as Burning Hands and Fireball) to a list which already includes several light-themed spells (like Sacred Flame and Guiding Bolt). I suppose this kind of concept could work for a Wildfire Druid, too, though for now, I understand Clerics a bit better and think it fits the concept better.

Kiri’s outfit was largely inspired by an outfit VTuber Korone Inugami occasionally wears. In addition to being an adorable outfit, I thought the colors work well for a character themed after autumn, as well as for fire due to the generally "warm" colors. Her holy symbol is a pumpkin with a Bowen knot carved into it. I tried to look up Samhain symbols, and the Bowen knot appeared often in my search, though I did try to design other leaf-themed symbols before settling on this. (Would making a Jack-O-Lantern require tinkerer’s tools or woodworker’s tools? Or something else?) I also figure she could use a hook to hold the lantern a distance away if she needs to, which could double as her mace.
Okay, FINALLY time to talk about the picture. I wanted this image to be heavily darkened with Kiri providing illumination. I took inspiration from Disney cartoons Gravity Falls and The Owl House when creating the scene. In fact, if you’ve seen Gravity Falls to the end, maybe you’ll recognize one of the monsters in this image. Those familiar with the old platformer game “Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins” may see another familiar face. I intended to use some trees from The Black Cauldron in this image, too, but I wound up with a lot more… life in this scene than I intended.

Interesting note about the colors: when I was putting down my flat colors, I actively tried to avoid using greens. I thought pushing my yellowish-greens closer to yellow and my bluish-greens toward cyan would add to an autumn image. So, when I laid the colors down, I would check the hue value of my colors and avoid the 60-179 range for the hue. (60 = pure yellow, 120 = pure green, 180 = pure cyan) I could go right up to these limits (numbers inbetween adjust the hue bit by bit), but I couldn’t cross those limits. Of course, with my multiply layers adding color over parts of the picture, the result you see may have put some parts into that color range regardless.

Possible autumn color range, though not specifically my colors

I also started to use masks more frequently before I started working on this picture to draw the whole thing out but hide portions I didn’t want visible. More importantly, I also figured out clipping masks (to an extent) while working on this image. My processes for shading the skeleton and the wolf were different, but they both involved masks in some way. For the skeleton, I used a clipping mask to shade the bone color (and a different mask for the holes in the bone), then I added a layer meant to appear as the bone color lit by Kiri’s yellow light on top of that. In hindsight, I probably should’ve made that “lit color” layer a mask for the bone color, too. I could do this since I made the bones all one main color. Because I had bloodstains on the werewolf, however, I carved out the parts of the whole body I wanted to shade first. Then, I duplicated the base fur color and recolored one version to appear illuminated by Kiri’s light. For the base I didn’t recolor, I laid a layer mask to match the shading, giving me a clean line meant to obscure the actual base color. This process wasn’t perfect, but with a bit more practice, I may be able to refine this process for even better shading.

Wow, I typed out way more about this picture than I intended. I guess that will happen when you try to explain both a new character and tricks you used to make your art. With that, though, we are caught up with the Topsfield Fair entries, so do not expect another post about an entry until next year. I just wanted to put these pictures out there as a show of what I can do when I’m pushing myself, and it feels great to get these done.

I don’t know if I will post here next week, but if I don’t, then probably the week after that. I’m out of fair entries, but I still draw other things occasionally. Thank you very much for reading, and look forward to more art in the future. (Maybe I should try some fanart. Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet are releasing soon, so maybe some creatures from those games.)