Time is ticking.
Time is ticking, and she's fading away. Her world feels dreary. To her, it is the perfect time to wait by her grave and let time dissolve her into nothingness
Long post ahead. Maybe. :) Enjoy reading, if you ever will. I appreciate it whenever people do that.
Drawing Time is Ticking
When I started working on this piece, all I thought about was practicing. I had no intention whatsoever to create a complete illustration out of this, let alone put together two. But I did.
Hence, my first every "long strip" illustration is born. You can find the "un-split" version on NFT Showroom. I was hoping to make it a little longer (like more), and while there were no signs whatsoever of MediBang or my phone lagging, I didn't want to risk it.
About the concept
Initially, the motivation was to draw a girl (I love drawing girls - it's my comfort zone) and play around with any idea that would pop into my head. I think my ideas may have been pretty morbid lately (I'm all right, everyone, don't worry! Haha) and since I've already included a fox skull into the equation anyway, why not maybe set it up in a cemetery?
Before we get into the cemetery talk, below is a GIF of the drawing process of the first part. Here, I incorporated changes in my art style, particularly on how I paint. The difference might not be so visible, but I promise, it's there. ;)
So I finished painting the girl. Now what?
Next came the cemetery concept. I was already thinking about such disturbing idea anyway, why not see it through? I'm still not really good with painting backgrounds, but hey, I did try! I didn't want to focus too much on details this time, which kind of bothered me as I am borderline meticulous about many things, including details (even when they aren't rendered beautifully most of the time, yes, I care so much about details).
Because I was thinking of a sunset ambience, the part 1 illustration came out in sepia tone. I really liked how it turned out, to be honest. No sense beating myself up if I didn't like it anyway. :P Then I thought... so what if there's a girl in the cemetery? Now what?
The webtoon inspirations
I've been seriously hooked into shounen webtoons lately, particularly on Solo Leveling and Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. Webtoons are usually long strips of colored comic. Instead of the usual by-page story telling, a webtoon goes from top to bottom, as if you're watching an anime series unfold.
So I thought... how about extend the cemetery to the underground? And then, in effect, extend the canvas. And so I did, because I was also feeling particularly pumped.
Part 2 illustration's idea came from the concept of time and life. The first idea I played with was creating an hour glass, but I didn't want that. Lol. I just wanted how hourglasses worked, so I painted something like the top image slowly dissolving into a pile of ash (or something as minuscule).
Then, on the pile, I initially hoped to paint little souls crying (like on Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood's Philosopher's Stone, but I felt bad, and I didn't want anyone seeing the artwork feel bad. So I settled with a hand seemingly reaching out, but actually being pulled back down, too.
I wanted to play around more with the concept, but I was running out of ideas. I'm still happy about the end result, though. :)
An NFT
I had troubles deciding how I'd mint this. Honestly. I thought about minting just the first part and leaving out the second, but that will take away the story I wanted to tell. So yeah, I ended up minting the long strip. :)
You can have the NFT (1 edition) over at NFT Showroom. :)
Notes
I'm not saying this just for the sake of saying it, but I really enjoyed this. I don't know why! I was doing exactly what I did with my previous artworks, so I couldn't really pinpoint what made working on this different.
It makes me happy that I can still draw as of late. My tasks at work IRL is outpouring and I am overwhelmed. I wouldn't mind if they were focused on one thing, but these tasks were literally all over the place, and I dislike it when I have deliverables that do not relate with one another. It's too difficult to focus. What do you do to not get yourself overwhelmed with responsibilities?
