Splinterlands Art Contest - Week 263 - Lyanna Natura

Hey there, good people. I hope this post finds you well. Today we got yet another entry in the Splinterlands Art Contest.
I know I keep saying this every week, but I think today's work is, again, one of my best works so far. I'm pushing my limit and creating new stuff every week thanks to the weekly Art Contest hosted by the Splinterland game.

Be sure to give them a visit here.

This week I spent the most time studying lights and new methods to bring more life into my art and looking at the result at a glance, I think it has really paid off and I'm so thrilled about that.

The Process

The initial process goes the same as every time, I couldn't be too much creative about it, but I did manage to get way faster and more efficient in this step thanks to all the daily practice I've been doing ^^

New Stuff

It was at this step that I'd usually finish the ending and call it a day. But I felt like it lacked something so I tried adding more lights and shadows as normal to bring more realism to the photo and guess what? IT WORKED.

It wasn't all fun and games, there was a ton of experimenting with angles and colors to get it right, but I think I managed to do it in the end. While it did take me quite a bit of time to get it right this one time, I think through practice, just like this sketch and coloring, I can speed up the process a lot more.

The Lighting

I decided to add some sunlight and sun rays to the mix to breathe more life into the painting. While it looked pretty decent initially, I started feeling like she was somewhat out of place after some time, and that's when I realized I needed more than the regular glows and shadows on her to make her fit into the picture perfectly.

Light Color

In the end, I settled with yellow for the parts the sun is shining on her hair and white for her dress. At first I tried to do her dress yellow too, but that looked too out of place and weird, so I started testing a couple of more colors and at the end, white came out victorious, so I stuck with it.

The Result

And here's the result after all the experiments I've been doing to fix and improve it.
Cheers~

Original Card Art: