illustration - sonatine and moths

current listen - nightwish | century child (2004)

Today’s illustration: the elf Sonatine and luna moths.

This is something I had knocking around in my head for a little bit. I wanted to portray how Sona’s skin looks in my head: dark, but lustrous. Like stargazing.

Plus I love luna moths (who doesn’t?), and have woven them into the dusk elf lore of my setting. And, crucially, I really wanted to actually finish a proper illustration. I, like many artists, will often abandon pieces because they don’t look exactly how I imagined them, because whatever my skills are don’t match my vision.

My goal was to push beyond that and just finish something, regardless of if it was perfect. Luckily, I am pretty happy with the result! I’m a big fan of the way the skin itself came out. There’s so much depth to black, and to dark skin in general (even if this is admittedly fantasy dark skin) that is underappreciated.

Here’s some detail shots for those of you brave enough to read the whole post: