Sorry this came so late- but Merry Christmas @part-time-pixie !! I was your secret Santa for the @mlsecretsanta 2023 event! This piece went through a lot of complications because I was so unsure about a lot of things! Let me run down the process!
I knew it had to be your AU since that’s a lot more personal and I myself am a big fan of personalized stuff! So I actually never knew anything about Winx before this so I researched- about 6 episodes for context of the fairy and specialist relations- so that’s one reason why the startup was slow but then!! I needed to figure out a setting- originally I was going with Magix City- but the color palette was more green and I wanted a more warm palette- but for the life of me I couldn’t find a place that screamed romance- eventually I gave in and just looked up “date in Winx” or something like that- and boom!! This place showed up- so heavy inspiration of the setting from this screen shot (lots of details were forgotten waaah-)
And then it was little things- from my research I realized they only transformed when battling so I needed a casual outfit (note for some reason I forgot to apply this logic to Luka’s fit I’m sorry 😭) for Adrien that wasn’t his powered up form for a casual setting- I ended up just asking- and I hope that didn’t clue you in but nonetheless I hope it was still somewhat a surprise! I’m so glad I did though because at that point I could finally finish the sketch- which was around the end of December so I was stuck on that for a while 😭
I finished the line art and coloring in a rush and man you can tell ;v; I went through a lot in coloring stage- I tried finishing this piece during a family outing and my markers (about 80+) fell out of their holders and went everywhere- also learned coloring over my white pen did not in fact keep it solid and the white began to get washed away from the marker on top, revealing the line art I messed up on beneath- one of the things that made me glad I was late is when you made this piece and I realized his gem clasp was teal- I was gonna make it yellow since that was the last red fountain specialist color not used and I assumed he’d just take it lmao! Though in short I went through all the stages of grief when doing the coloring ;v;
All to say though I hope despite all the flaws you still like it! I was really happy with this around the line art stage and even now- I’m just harsh on my own work but this is actually the biggest piece in my art book (I’ve been working on this book since Summer 2022!) so I suppose that is to say I’m glad I was able to try something new with this one!
(Also small note but I realized the quality turned out really fuzzy on here- if you want @part-time-pixie I can send a zip file to you in dms?)