Moonlit Connection
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I mentioned in my most recent piece of Genshin Impact fan art (can be found here if you missed it) that I’ve really enjoyed the recent parts of the story, which is once again what inspired me.
Although the game’s story has been going for a long time
now, there have been very few characters who seemed to really connect with
Aether (left) despite him being the main character that the story follows.
After completing Act VIII of Nod-Krai’s story I realised how deeply Columbina and Aether seemed to understand each other so couldn’t resist painting
them together.
This piece started out as an idle sketch in my sketchbook,
but once I’d taken it as far as I could at that small scale I decided to scan
it in and sketch it out properly. At one point I intended to paint over the
sketch fully, but in the end I decided to keep the linework and simple shading
because the simplicity of it worked well for this piece.
I toyed with a few different ideas for the background, and
for a large part of the sketching process it was instead a heart shape framing
the two characters. However, once I turned my attention fully to the background
I swapped the heart for a moon as it felt thematically appropriate for their
story. Columbina is heavily associated with the moon in and of herself, but it
was also on the moon that the two of them had a very meaningful conversation.
The phrase ‘Come night of day, may the moonlight connect us’
is a greeting various characters including Columbina herself have used during the
game’s story.
Below is a GIF image showing a few stages of the process for
the painting.
[Image ID] an animated gif showing various stages, from
sketch to final piece, in the process of creating the illustration [description
end]
I have also created a speedpaint timelapse for this painting
which can be watched below or on my YouTube channel:
Time taken: 4 hours (1 hour for the paper sketch + 3 hours digitally)
Computer Type: Windows
Program: FireAlpaca
Drawing Tablet: Gaomon M106K
Characters: Aether & Columbina, from the game Genshin Impact
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