Original DA upload date: November 29, 2019
Grunvale’s oddball tetrad, and the fiery redhead of the Korvat Isles, celebrate yet another hundred-follower milestone breached on Twitter.
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Wow… 600 followers. And to think that not much longer than a year ago, I’d just crossed 300 followers and thought it was a huge milestone (yeah, I know, that artwork was specifically celebrating 300 DA watchers, but I crossed 300 followers on Twitter around the same time, so looking back, I see that artwork as fainting two Magcargo with one Muddy Water). And just in the span of this year, I’ve crossed 400 and 500. And now, as of last night, I’ve broken the barrier of 600… it still feels surreal. All I can say about that, to everyone who finds my work awesome enough to warrant a follow, is, well, thank you. Thank you all. You’re all awesome. Here’s to 700 and beyond!
Now to the artwork itself… HOO BOY. Get comfortable, there’s a lot to unpack here.
I knew as the milestone was approaching that I wanted all five of my most prominent characters (Gilda Grime, Margo Hynde, Wendy Wyler, April Lowry and Rowan Rudyard) in this piece together, and I wanted them all in their formal attire. It’s a special occasion, after all. And nothing says special occasion like giant groups of characters gathered together, dressed to impressed and ready to celebrate! So that’s what I went with.
Of course, Gilda’s in her 40s-style yellow dress, and Margo’s in her sequined yellow dress. That was a given right from the time I conceived the idea. Fun fact; back at the beginning of this year, I was honestly considering making the blue dress Margo wore back on Valentine’s Day her main formal outfit, over the yellow one she’s had since the beginning. But I had a change of heart after I realized my followers like the yellow dress enough to make fanart of it… which in turn led to me realizing that it’s much more fitting for Margo than the blue one. I totally see the oddball tetrad going to a formal event together, which Gilda wears her yellow dress to… and then she gets angry at Margo once she sees that she’s also wearing yellow, just to troll her. Hell, it’s in character for both of them to react just like that in that kind of scenario.
Wendy’s formal outfit is basically an updated version of the dress she wore when she danced with Randy. Most major differences here is that she’s wearing diamond jewelry instead of pearls and gold hoops, and she has a beret. I did consider at one point giving her dark purple gloves (the same color as her beret and heels), but I abandoned the idea. As for April, since she made Gilda’s yellow dress, I figured it’d make sense for hers to have the same basic design (puffy shoulders, lace trim), but with a different color, of course. So that’s what I went with. That red is the same red as the polo her brotheroften wears.
And as for Rowan, I did experiment with drawing her in a dress, but after drawing her in a tuxedo in my sketchbook, I found that the latter fit her personality better, so I went with that. Whenever I draw Rowan in a formal situation in Korvat Isles, she’ll be wearing this tux. She’s not like Margo where she just has a regular disdain for dresses, she hates them so much that it doesn’t even register as an option to her. Also, because Korvat Isles is set in a completely different universe from Grunvale, and also because it involves magic, I decided to have her coming through a portal from the Korvativerse, and have her use a potion to spell out the word ‘FOLLOWERS’ instead of hold up a sign. Which makes April’s nervous face all the more fitting.
The scenery was fun to figure out how to execute. I loved the carpet texture (without beveling) so much, I decided to save it as a PNG for future reference. Considering this is a piece celebrating a milestone, I decided to give the scenery the colors of precious metals. The carpet is gold, the wall is silver, and the baseboard is bronze. All and all, this was a fun piece to work on…
…and you very nearly did not get to see it!
Immediately after finishing this artwork, I decided to clean out some old PSDs in ArtStudio Pro. And when I went to the Photos app shortly after, I saw, much to my horror, that I forgot to export this. So I immediately rushed back to the ASP app… where much to my relief, the PSD for this file (which was a whopping 132.5MB, in case you’re wondering) was spared, and still ready to be exported. Phew! Could you imagine if I deleted this by mistake? This took me nearly six hours, and plus, this is one of the works I’m doing for the college assignment. That would have been a nightmare if I deleted it by mistake!
Thankfully, it was not. You know that carpet texture I talked about above? That too still had yet to be exported, and was one of the layers of the PSD. So this artwork, literally owes its existence to that texture. The gold carpet these girls stand on, is holy ground.
And that’s all I have to say about this artwork. Thanks again, everyone, for helping me reach this milestone. As for this artwork, post in the comments below what you think!
DON’T FORGET TO FOLLOW ME ON OTHER PLATFORMS:
DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/phoenixofgrunvale
Twitter: twitter.com/StormTheArtist
Instagram: www.instagram.com/phoenix_of_g…YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCEtCO…
Discord: Contact me by my tag (Phoenix of Grunvale#1752) for an invite to my server.
Grunvale – Chapter 11, Part 2: Now Available on DA!
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Grunvale and Korvat Isles are owned by me. You’re free to draw fanart of them yourself, as long as you credit me.
This artwork was made at 4K resolution, in 2.35:1.
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(reads Margo’s sign)
…oh, real mature, Margo.
The Gallery of Stormy Adler 