Sky Sings To Dancing Clouds
Character Splash Art
7/1/25
​​Key Aspects:
The best splash arts don't just communicate key elements of the character, but express their story as well. To do this, I wanted to keep some specifics in mind when desining Sky:
1. A supernatural being amongst the mortals
- Like all Air Genasi, Sky is a descendent of an elemental Genie. In some of the D&D lore, they're created when a mortal wishes for a baby from a Genie - which really inspired me. I focused on the idea that she was made not born - she is supernaturally perfect, and it gets to her head. I think she actually believes she's not mortal. She hasn't died yet after all.
2. Need for approval
- Elves and nobles are both well known for their 'holier than thou' attitudes, and I thought this could enhance Sky's superiority complex.
Sky is also totally desperate to be seen as a member of her elven family, with which she has no blood. She's desperate to belong, and to prove she's above them.
3. I am the main character!
- Being under the eyes of many, Sky never turns off the charm (on purpose at least). She walks with the grace of a dancer. The stage is her home. All of life is a performance to her, and she is the main character.
Inspiration
Genasi theming in 5th Edition seems to lean dangerously close to vague orientalism. I wanted to avoid this, and ground Sky's design in real world culture.
Whislt I was trying to find the historical equivalent of the classic curly-toed jester shoe (a poulaine or crakow) I found Kathak - a traditional form of Indian dance which was practised by ancient travelling bards - Kathakar means storyteller. If that doesn't scream freedom-loving bard literally composed of air, I don't know what does.
I primarily took inspiration from the costuming of Kathakar as it naturally allows for freedom of movment and is bright, expressive and colourful. I was also inspired by the precision and movement in Kathak dances. Seeing the skirt in motion is genuinely mesmerising, and observation really helped me when capturing the movement.
I also love the work of artists like Chin Likhui and Aleksander Brodziński. Hoping to absorb their skill via osmosis. I love Likhui's use of tone and composition, and Brodziński's inventive brushwork is something I'm always trying to add more of into my stuff.
Initial Pose and Sketches
For this project, I wanted to test the speed that I'd been cultivating with the Inktober challenge. And, since I had such a clear idea in my head of the composition of the piece, I took a leap of faith and skipped thumbnailing.
Instead, I used Daz 3D - a tool I'd heard other artists talk about using, and which helped me to create the complex pose in a 3D space. It definitely took some patience to get right, but being able to view the model from different angles, with different lights was so useful!
My initial sketch I kept pretty loose, especially in the details of the jewelry - I mostly wanted to get a good feel for the hair, face and clothing. I had fun desiging a lot of this - taking inspiration from classic D&D bards and jesters, as well as traditional Indian dance costuming.
Moving quickly on, I tweaked and bashed the renders of the model together to produce a greyscale pass.
I've found that working in as few layers as possible (sometimes only 1) helps improve speed at the early stages as I don't get lost trying to find where I put my line art, and it forces you me to be precious about any of it - exactly what you need.
A Struggle With Colours
After I was happy with the overall greyscale balance, I moved onto a few basic passes of colour - which I struggled to find for a while. Even later into the project, you can see that I add different colours into the mix at the very end!
I knew the potential in this project was huge, especially after all I'd learned when painting Rowan - but the awkwardness of using the 3D model for the first time discouraged me, and not being able to find the colours even more so.
I think finding the correct hues for the blue and white parts was what was tripping me up - to make it brighter, I was thinking about bright cyan for blue, and yellow for white. Though they have their place in the final piece, I reserved them for the places in the brightest light, and chose cooler colours elsewhere. It felt like a personal relevation when I changed the shadows in the skirt to blue, and the highlights to yellow (and keeping the underside of the skirt a saturated, darker, cool blue helped)
Painting
Whilst I was balancing the colours, I was painting up some of the key, and tricky areas at the same time. Namely the hair and face. As an Air Genasi, Sky's hair is naturally, part cloud. Capturing this floaty ephemeral nature in a noble up-tight up-do was a major challenge. I think I shot myself in the foot a bit with trying to get the two ideas to work together, but we soldier on!
Of course, I've been heavily influenced by the masterpiece of the Arcane tv show - texture heavy, sketchy, loose art that still tricks the eye with realism has always captivated with me. I had a lot of fun playing around with the texture of the hair! I also exaggerated and tweaked the face away from the proportions of the 3D model, which helped to make Sky look like a real person who might actually exist.
Also proud of myself for the crown - I knew this would look great as a sun symbol against Sky's cloud hair and I'm so happy with how it turned out. I also had fun with the elven motifs - I think it worked really well to show that Sky might have inherited the lute from her family, or that she's showing off her heritage!
Home Stretch
A lot of the heavy work ahead of me now was the rendering - straight and relatively simple work that I just had to knuckle down and do. Certain things still trip me up - folding cloth in particular.
Throughout the whole project I worked in bits and pieces; in between several other projects. Usually this workflow is really productive for my personal work, as I never fatigue on any single piece, and it lets me have fresh eyes on everything a lot more often. However, I definitely slowed down more than I needed to when rendering.
Eventually though, I made it to the home stretch - the background. I knew I really wanted to get Sky to sit well in the scene, and that the lighting and perspective had to sell it. It took a few tries and tweaks, but I'm really proud of the stage floor and curtain. It surprised me how simple I could go with the rendering for it, and it still look real.
Overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. I think there are definitely some awkward areas - more thought could have been given to the jewelry for example -but for proving to myself I could work fast, and put a character in a scene that fits them well, I think it was a success.
