Art Piece Title: A Thousand Lights, One Storm
Digital Art (Drawn on Procreate)

Taking almost 17 hours, this piece is an exploration of lighting, emotion, and composition. I wanted to improve the storytelling in my pieces, so I decided to create an illustration that achieved that goal. When starting, I wasn’t sure what kind of scene I wanted to depict, and I spent a lot of time trying out different kinds of sketches. However, I knew I wanted to convey a dramatic and cinematic scene of beautiful sorrow. I tried out sketches with glaciers, boats, and forests, but eventually settled on a scene with lanterns, where the brightness and glow of the lanterns would contrast against the character’s hurt expression and the blues of the night.

The art process was extremely tedious. The sketching process itself took three hours, as I struggled to come up with the perfect composition. In addition, there were many elements in the background—such as the trees and water—that I needed to pay attention to. Due to the complexity of this piece, balancing out the background detail was the most important, since too much detail will remove the focus from the character. I had to draw each lantern manually, creating an illusion of detail with big brushstrokes yet maintaining simplicity to not overwhelm the viewer. In addition, to make sure the clothes and shoes were accurate, I had to find many different references—even setting up 3D models for shoes to draw them in the correct angles. The character’s lighting was incredibly difficult as well since she is lit by so many light sources. To ensure my lighting made sense, I asked for constructive criticism from other artists and adjusted my work accordingly. I spent hours rendering the background and character, trying my best to convey the atmosphere and emotion. After rendering, I made color adjustments and added some blur and rain effects to emphasize the environment. I wanted to push how the character’s mood and setting clashed, and how there is still beauty during sad moments.

This piece was a challenge against willpower and dedication due to the many complex elements and details. When creating this piece, I sometimes felt the urge to give up and start something new, but found the strength to push on and persist. However, I really enjoyed the process of creating this piece, and am overall satisfied with the end result. I hope that viewers will appreciate the atmosphere and cinematic setting, and maybe even guess what story could have led up to this scene.