Sokkla Secret Santa for Seyary Minamoto! (Inspired by “Gladiator” and “Yakuza AU”)
Here are the two artworks I made for @seyaryminamoto for this years Sokkla Secret Santa event. This is my first time doing this event so I hope it turned out well 😊 I was originally going to do 3 artworks because I finished the first one quickly, but the second one kicked my ass and literally took me a month to do 😂 I had a good laugh when I drew Seyary as my gift recipient, considering I’ve already made a habit of making art for her, this way I didn’t have to worry about not having ideas 😂
Okay, so the first artwork is based off the painting scene from Chapter 194 of Seyary’s Sokkla masterpiece: Gladiator. The whole Return to Shu Jing Arc is one of my favorites, and this scene always stood out to me. I took a much different approach to the landscape compared to the Shu Jing waterfall we see in the show, but I’m pretty proud of how it turned out. I used the Aponwao falls in Venezuela as a reference for the waterfall on the right, thought it would be a cool little easter egg for those who know Seyary 😊
The first painting is definitely a little more in my comfort zone, but I’m happy with the result regardless. Especially the clouds, I love clouds 😂 Out of all the ones I’ve done, I think it has that “oil painting feel” the most, Artrage is known for having realistic oil physics, so I’ve been trying to take more advantage of that than before.
Ah, so the second painting. I love this one and I also hate it because it was insanely difficult for me (it has 170 layers 😭 which was probably unnecessary but whatever). Just the sketch for the perspective took me a whole day to figure out too. It is from Seyary’s Yakuza AU that she wrote during Sokkla Saturdays last year. It’s one of my favorite AUs and I was really excited to paint something from it!
I really wanted to push myself out of my comfort zone for this one, so I tried to come up with a much more dynamic composition. Once I had the idea of the motorcycle headlight backlighting Azula, I knew I had to paint it. I really struggle with painting people as well, so painting Sokka and Azula in more complex positions proved to be quite challenging.
I originally tried to make them have more complicated expressions, but it was nightmare fuel, so I have expunged those versions from existence.
I did take some liberties here too. Sokka’s crashed motorcycle wasn’t so close to him in the actual story, and it certainly wasn’t raining either, but both aspects made the painting feel so much more alive, I couldn’t bring myself to leave them out.
Anyways, I hope everything turned out well! And I hope everyone has had a great holiday and will have a great New Year!!❤️❤️❤️
