OC Gala 2022 (full art process) (Patreon)

Since I already shared The Vampire here, this is a retroactive post. But I figured why not write up something anyways! 

For $10+ patrons, I have a timelapse video of this dress saved on my computer - if you want to see it, say the word and I'll upload ~

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The OC Gala was announced on Twitter in December, with the theme "vampire masquerade". I wasn't going to participate at first, because I'm trying not to draw things for other people unless I'm asked to which includes contests and events like this one. There's this insecure side of me that gets really bitter if I spend a lot of time on a look for someone or some event and it doesn't get the attention I wanted. I'm not proud of that insecure side of me, so I was gonna avoid this event so that I could avoid that part of me coming out.

But...I did have a few ideas, so I wanted to at least sketch them out on paper. If I happened to come up with something cool, maybe it was worth a shot.

I knew I was going to draw inspiration from Venetian carnivals for the masquerade part - the full face white masks adorned the elaborate detail, combined with grand bulky costumes? They're so my aesthetic. 

I also knew I wanted a grand stained glass dress from the start. Vampire fashion makes me think of the Gothic era and drawing inspiration from Gothic architecture instead of fashion could be a fun twist on the theme. I tried a pope hat (papal hat?) to really nail in the cathedral theme, but then I think the vampire theme was lost. So I went with a batwing headpiece, which was fine with me because that was the very first thing that came to my mind for a vampire theme. 

I showed the bottom middle thumbnail to my friend Mai who was planning to participate, and he said it would be a crime if I didn't get this dress drawn. And honestly, I really liked the dress too. So I decided to draw this dress just to get it out on paper; participating in the OC Gala would be more of a bonus. 

It's easy to just scribble on a thumbnail and worry about the actual detail later, but unfortunately now was the part where I had to worry about it. Thankfully, I had a lot of stained glass references pulled up. I was also really inspired by Videnoir Couture, a lingerie line with a particularly relevant cathedral-inspired collection. 

I started with the headdress and began to add detail, and while I liked where it was going I realized that all the small details were indistinguishable when I zoomed out to view the full look. I think that's a really important takeaway - too much detail isn't always a good thing! If you get too small and elaborate, others can barely see the detail and the hard work you put into it. Good detail strikes the balance between elaborate and visible.

Here's my revised headdress detail, simpler but way easier to see. Even if it doesn't look very detailed, it will once I add all the other details on the look.

More details - this took a lot of trial and error, I didn't just come up with this right away! 

At this point I decided I had enough detail where I wanted to start figuring out the colors. I had just colored the thumbnail red and black, but I was really interested in capturing various gradients to really get the stained glass vibe across.

Nope.

Better!

Finished the rest of the sketch and put it on my backdrop to get some initial reactions from my friends. The overwhelming consensus was that it was nice, but it didn't feel vampy enough for the theme. 

I came up with this red version which everyone liked much better, but I liked the other one so much more for the stained glass feel that I really didn't want to pick the red gradient 🙈 Parts of the red gradient feel too pink for me and not very vampy either.

I made this alternate version which I really liked, inspired by my portrait of vampire bride Lucy Westenra. I thought it was very cathedral-y and vamp-y at the same time...but a friend said "meh" and I was like "fuck it I'm just gonna do plain red and black it feels the most vampy to me in the end."

Final lineart. Normally I'm a lot more precise and I try to make everything super accurate perspective wise, using something like the symmetry tool. But I felt that doing so would be way too much effort for a look that may not perform as well as I want on social media, so I decided to freehand it and take it easy. I feel like any inaccuracies aren't too noticeable at this level of detail...

Flats. Sorry for the eye-searing red, I noticed it too and I knew I had to fix it.

To really sell the stained glass look, I decided to add this handdrawn mosaic texture. You might recognize it from my Lunar Executive design, because it's the same one! It's not cheating if I drew it myself 😤

Even though I was against a gradient on the red dress, I did add some shading to give the dress some depth.

Put the dress on the original background provided by the event host. I had a hunch this background was going to be way too dark to show all the detail, and I was right. I also wanted to use my backdrop to keep my ~Instagram aesthetic~, so I came up with a background that combined my backdrop with this one.

And she's done! But not quite...

I really loved two of the color variants so much that I had to flesh them out as proper looks of their own. I was actually thinking of drawing them with the papal hat to contrast with the vampire dress, but the hat ended up being one of those things that looks better when sketching than rendering. I still have this idea to make a more colorful, rainbowy version of this dress with the papal hat, but I'll save this for later!

So I'm calling the red variant the Vampy Version, and I present the Stained Glass Version:

And the Cathedral Version:

As for the OC Gala itself, I'm pleasantly surprised with the reception my look received! It wasn't the most liked outfit or anything, but it's not like it matters because it wasn't a competition. I definitely wasn't expecting the amount of attention it got and I'm really grateful for it. 

More importantly, this was the first time in a while I was able to participate in the event just because I wanted to draw my design, not because I wanted attention or "to win". So I'm hopeful that I can eventually get over this competitive insecurity of mine and do more events like this. But that said, getting love is always a nice plus! 🥰