I decided a long time ago that I really wanted to start making more videos to share with you guys. Participating in Art Fight this past July was the perfect excuse to try my hand at videos once again!
It was my first time participating in Art Fight and I’m so pleased to report that other artists there made it such a joyful, nostalgic experience for me. I felt like I was back at college again where my Art Department buddies and I would hang out together and geek out about our characters, drawing them for one another without any of the stress of monetizing our art, only the pure joy of being massive nerds.
Lately, I’ve been very bummed out about seeing my favorite art communities and social media sites I’ve put years into crumbling before my eyes, so participating in Art Fight was a healing salve for my soul that I needed more than I could have guessed.
What is Art Fight?
It’s an art trading event hosted on artfight.net that welcomes artists of all levels to come together and trade art for the month of July. Everyone is split up into two teams who ‘fight’ each other for dominance, with the trades you make earning each user more points. The more polished your art trade “Attack” is, the more points you’ll earn for your team. You can even “Attack” people on your own team (known as “Friendly Fire”).
Each participant shares profiles of their original characters for other artists to draw. I’ve even seen some instances of “Draw A Character” character profiles where people challenge artists to work under inspiration prompts instead of uploading a specific character profile. It’s very freeform. You are also not required to return trades you recieve, if you don’t want. The freedom to control what you draw made this super chill and appealing to me!
Art Fight allows not only 2D art, but 3D, animation, and crafts as well, so it’s a great opportunity to hop in and practice with your favorite medium. I may try my hand at jewelry or maquettes inspired by characters next year!
Let the Battles Begin!
The video above goes through timelapses of each of the entries I drew while I talk about the characters, share Procreate tips, and finally share the art (and animation) I recieved of my own characters. I suggest giving it a watch for the full experience! Otherwise, I’m also sharing the art here in the post so you can quickly view it.
This year, my goal for participating was to try and see if I could work faster, as I’m usually a very slow, meticulous artist, so I kept each entry under 2 hours. I learned a ton about tightening up my workflow by simply limiting myself to rough underdrawing, skipping right to inking, and learning to trust in my instincts and ability to tweak later, rather than obsessively perfecting everything early on. Done is better than perfect, or so I’m trying to teach myself!
During the event, I also experimented with new tools, including the wonderfully bristled, organic texture of the Inka Pen in Procreate. It may just be my favorite new digital pen to draw with! (You can see this brush at work particularly in Cyn and Cultivar of Bloodied Sunset’s portraits).
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Evelyn for Viday
What a gorgeous character! This vengeful demon has all the hallmarks of things I love. Horns, halos, tattoos. Check, check, and check!
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Pretty Boy for DungeonDelves
How could anyone resist wanting to draw his fabulous parrot-themed hair? Pretty Boy was a great chance for me to play with that silver shining in the shadows effect of his tattoo, which I was quite pleased with.
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Rowyn for Lumaris
Lumaris gentle dragon prince was a great challenge for portraying a soft color palette and implying the detail of his neck scales rather than drawing each and every one.
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Cyn for ArtoftheNerd
Probably my favorite portrait of the bunch for the dramatic lighting and restricted color palette! Time restrictions led to creativity when the complicated weapon and fingers meant I had to quickly come up with colors before I exceeded the amount of time I set for myself. The simplicity of this one helps the glowing eyes really stand out. That shadow cutting across the eyes is something I’ve always wanted to do, so it was satisfying to bring it into this piece!
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Cultivar of Bloodied Sunsets for kessinder
Vampire girls really won this event for me! This gal has such a cutesy-dangerous vibe that I really enjoyed drawing. Yet another great candidate for experimenting with dramatic horror lighting.
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Kainda for Toasted_bAguette6
HOW have I never drawn a goblin before this piece? What a fun opportunity this was! Toasted_bAguette6 described Kainda as being a chaos goblin similar to Nimona and seeing as how that movie is now one of my all-time classic favorites, I was stoked to channel that vibe for this piece. How did I do for drawing my first goblin?
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Laelri for Creativeidiote
This one was the true test of ‘get it done fast, gurl’! I didn’t start this piece till the morning of the final day of the event and also wanted to find a way to utilize what time I had wisely, so her line work had to carry the piece through no shading with only color flats. The container shape around the portrait helped tie this all together so she didn’t have ‘floating head syndrome’.
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Glittering Blade Meets Kalara for ShiftingPath
For the grand finale, I knew I wanted to do this piece for ShiftingPath, who is the ringleader organizing the Exalted Secret Santa every year (another art trading event that I enjoy participating in when I can). I wanted to give back to ShiftingPath for being such trooper for organizing the Exalted artist community, so I was overjoyed to see they were participating in ArtFight this year too!
This one probably took more like 4-5 hours as I tried to structure it more than the others, while also keeping the background more implied with painterly strokes and shapes. I’ve talked more about this one in the video, so definitely go watch that for more about the thumbnailing process and why I chose this particular scene.
(You can skip right to the segment on this piece here).
Glittering Blade (left) belongs to ShiftingPath.
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Attacks Incoming!
But that’s not all! Check out the lovely entries other artists did for me this year. It’s always a lot of fun to see my brainchildren in different styles and interpretations! Be sure to check out the video for a closer look at each entry and character discussion. You can skip right to each one in the chapter breaks listed in the video’s description over on YouTube.
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Character: Kalara Vadras by me
Lumaris – https://www.lumaris.net/
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Character: Kalara Vadras by me
DungeonDelves – https://dungeondelves.carrd.co/
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Character: The Crucified Dreamer by me
Art by kessinder – https://www.pillowfort.social/cinders
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Character: The Crucified Dreamer by me
Art by ArtoftheNerd – https://instagram.com/Art_o_nerd/
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Character: Rabanne Aroré by me
Art by Toasted_bAguette6 – https://twitter.com/Toast_baguette
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Character: Rabanne Aroré by me
Art by Viday – https://twitter.com/Vidayium
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Character: Anko Xelkova by me
Creativeidiote – https://instagram.com/creativeidiote/
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I hope you all enjoyed this look at the festival of art trading that was Art Fight! What was your favorite portrait from the set I did? Was it the same favorite as mine? Do you Art Fight too?
Feel free to share your profiles with me in the comments so I can catch you next year! You can find my Art Fight profile here.
Hopefully find you all next year for the event! I plan to make it a part of my yearly rotation from now on because it was so positive for me and I enjoyed the carefree excuse for practice. See you on the (art) battlefield!