Splinterlands Weekly Art Contest - Week 186 | Sea Monster (Bakunawa Inspired)

HELLO FELLOW HIVERS!

Welcome to another Splinterlands Weekly Art Challenge!

For this week, I wanted to create something different. I chose Sea Monster card from @splinterlands for this fan art. Instead of doing the usual, I got a little bit of inspiration from our own Philippine Mythology - the tale of Bakunawa.

Application/Materials Used:

• Desktop computer
• Medibang Paint Pro

REFERENCES:

Tale of Bakunawa	Sea Monster Lore

PROCESS:

Sketch

Using Medibang, I made a rough sketch of the character. As you can see, I drew the sea monster around the moon and looks like going to eat it because of the Bakunawa inspiration. I also made the moon larger to emphasize it. I also put splashes of water because I wanted it coming out of the sea but later on I decided not to put it.

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Outline

After I made the sketch, I traced to put the outline for a cleaner look.

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Additional Info

I watched a youtube video before when I was first learning digital art about a technique in which you would use words to fill the colors of a picture. I wanted to try that because I thought it will fit to the art I am going to make. So instead of using solid colors, I used letters.

But it is not just any letters. I used Baybayin - a writing system used by ancient Filipinos before the Spanish colonization here in the Philippines. It is based on the syllables and how you pronounce the word. For each syllable, there is a corresponding letters. You can check out this link for more info.

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Ba-ku-na-wa	Bu-wa-n (Moon)

I made these beforehand to put on the drawing later on. The bold letters in the middle corresponds to the syllables in the description. However, when I tried to put these on the drawing, it doesn't look good. Instead, I did it manually by scribbling through the character.

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Color

I scribbled the Baybayin letters of Bakunawa into the body of the dragon using tapered pen. I also considered the light coming from the moon so there is a variation in sizes of the letters for the effect. If you zoom in, some of the letters may be overlapping but still you will notice the letter.

Same thing I did for the other parts.

Fin and Tail	Little Details	Moon

Also, I changed the color of the outline to compliment the colors of the letters because I don't want it black 🤣.

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Background

For the background, I wanted it to look rustic and like it came out of an old book. So using airbrush in medibang, I put brown color on low opacity. I also used paint brush setting to put blotches of brown color as well.

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After putting color to the background, I drew these tattoo symbols as borders. These are called Batok. These tattoos are given to bravest warriors and headhunters in a tribe. I particularly looked for the moon and snake symbol only. Why snake? Well, you know snake, serpent, dragon, are like the same lol 🤣. Just to stay true to the concept of what I am doing 😅.

A little bit of information if you want to know more. Click this link.

via Pinterest	via Pinterest

So this is what it looked like. You will notice some irregularities in the shape because I only drew them.

With the Character

FINAL OUTPUT

For the final output, I made two again. I also put my name.

The first picture is labeled as Bakunawa in baybayin.
The second picture is labeled as Sea Monster in baybayin.

And that's it! I am really happy on how it turned out 😄😄😄

I hope you like it! 🤗

If you want to try using Baybayin, there is a free website you can use to practice. Check it here.

If you are not yet familiar with Splinterlands, you can visit and use my link.

Text divider by @rqr4. Visit here.

See you on my next post! 😁

via giphy