November MOTM: of the starry night - concept sketch + design commentary // sfw

thanks again to toreadorkable and lostmisfits for suggesting a starry night/constellation MOTM theme!

at the start of this designing process, i gave myself a challenge. see, i already have a couple of monsters based on night sky aesthetics. my OC weshau is a so-called starbeast; his colour palette ranges from mid to very dark blue, and his coat is dotted with small white stars. almost two years ago, in december 2018, i created a MOTM design themed on northern lights; they also have a deep blue colour scheme and similar star 'freckles'.

thing is, i wanted to make sure this new design didn't end up too similar to either weshau or the northern lights character. giving a monster a dark, rich blue coat speckled with shiny dots is a stellar look (pUn iNtEnDeD), but surely there must be other ways to interpret the starry aesthetic. i decided to challenge myself to come up with something different and more unexpected. specifically, i wanted to use a different colour palette, and come up with an alternative way to portray the stars. i decided to use a more artsy and desaturated colour scheme, consisting of grey and black with a green-blue undertone plus stark yellow for the stars. instead of drawing the stars as shiny little dots i could use stylised shapes, in a way that would absolutely look different from the designs mentioned above. 

with that in mind, i started thinking about what this monster's body should look like and what kind of neat design elements i could 'dress' him in. i considered choosing a constellation or zodiac sign to base him on, but i wanted the design to embody the starry night sky as a 'broader' concept, rather than any of the fabled individuals and creatures that the constellations represent. on that note i also thought about finding star-related bits and pieces from folklore and myth to draw inspiration from, but i'm going to be entirely real here -- for a change, i really wasn't in the mood for doing much research. i think i was a bit burnt out from designing the eldritch angel, because it was a very research-heavy process. heck, i  practically wrote a paper to explain their appearance and drew one of the most intricate pieces i've made lately. i realised i was stressing out about the starry design, because i was subconsciously pressuring myself to prepare for it by doing the same ridiculous amount of research.

thankfully i managed to remind myself that it's far from necessary. not every design *has* to be based on hours of research or be rooted in any specific lore. it's equally fine to choose theme-appropriate elements for no deeper reason than how pretty they look. so i decided that this month, i was going to work more intuitively. don't get me wrong, i absolutely love doing research and crafting well thought-out designs that are partially or wholly based on folklore, mythology, history, and archaeology. but sometimes i just want to mix and match aesthetically pleasing design features without necessarily anchoring my choices in any specific source of inspiration. as soon as i remembered that i don't actually *have* to do heaps of research if i don't feel like it, i was able to have so much fun concepting this monster. i ended up incorporating a couple of star-related things i was already familiar with, but otherwise centered the design on pure aesthetics.

i opened up a blank canvas and started "thinking with my pen," making basic anatomy sketches and experimenting with various ideas. whenever i thought of a design element i might want to incorporate, i made a doodle or note of it. for example i considered giving him a flowing mane resembling a nebula, or hanging a belt full of astronomical tools around his waist. ancient astrologers sometimes foretold omens for powerful rulers, so i thought about dressing him like a royal advisor, in clothes and jewellery with a starry theme. alternatively i could portray him as the ferryman that brings the souls of the dead to the heavens, fastening them in the sky as stars. but while i do enjoy the idea of this individual serving either of those functions, i decided not to rely on clothes or accessories to embody the starry theme -- i wanted it to be a part of his very body.

with weshau and the northern lights monster, the star details are distributed across their torso and limbs. for this guy, i wanted to come up with a different kind of 'surface' on which i could apply the stylised pattern. it would preferably be a pretty large surface, so i could distribute plenty of stars across it and make it a focal point of the design.

i liked the idea of giving him a horse-like mane that would serve as a nice canvas for a bunch of stars, but it didn't feel like *enough.* i generally enjoy incorporating features that look like clothing or accessories but that are actually part of a monster's body, such as hoods 'made of skin' that attach to their collar bones -- but the northern lights monster already has a prominent veil, and i felt like a hood would look too similar. instead i gave him a 'train' that attach to his hips and lower back, trailing behind him as he walks (or floats across the sky). it reminded me of a goldfish's tail, which led me to add the pair of smaller 'fins' that attach to his hips and that partly overlap the train. even though he has legs, it makes his silhouette somewhat resemble that of a merperson's. to balance the top half of the design i also added a cape that extends from his collar bones and trapezius. all these elements look like something between cloth and fish-like fins and all provide excellent surfaces for the starry pattern.

as mentioned above i went for very stylised stars, of a simplified and classic shape, along with some even simpler scribbles. they're biggest around the edges of the 'fins' and at some places they fade into the background hue, simply because it makes the pattern easier on the eye. lately i've been into the idea of adding two-dimensional patterns to three-dimensional surfaces -- if that makes any kind of sense -- so i don't mind that it looks unnatural. since the stars are the 'main feature' i kept the rest of the colour palette pretty basic and neutral; his body is medium and dark grey with a warm undertone, while the fins have a colder, green-blue tint and simply  fade from pale to almost black.

at this point i realised that the fin-like features made him resemble kubi's design of their character wansa. it was completely unintentional, but i still felt pretty sheepish about it. however kubi reassured me that they didn't mind the similarity and that it would actually be cool if this guy is another member of wansa's species. he's honestly a perfect fit, lore-wise, because wansa's species was created by daiva, goddess of the night sky and the ocean. many spirits and individuals associated with her have an aquatic and/or starry aesthetic, and with his pattern and goldfish-esque 'fins' he ticks both boxes. i even tweaked his silhouette to be more similar to wansa's arrow-like outline, so i want to make sure to give kubi due credit and thank them for letting me draw some inspiration from wansa's design. <3

after establishing the core features i added a few details and  'accessories' to wrap up the design. the slight webbing between this monster's toes is a little nod to how our daiva-related lore equates the night sky with the ocean. the darker 'gloves' and 'socks' of his arms and legs end in a fin-like edge, adding some nice detailing to the otherwise relatively simple appearance of his body. the blindfold picks up the yellow colour of the stars, and on the finished painting i ended up giving him claws of the same hue.

he had a fairly regular-looking monster head on my first few sketches, but it honestly felt too basic and i decided to re-design it into more of a statement piece. i wanted to incorporate an astrolabe -- it's an astronomical tool and i have absolutely zero idea of how it works, but it looks really gorgeous. i figured i could make it part of a headdress, along with some smaller 'fins' that may or may not be organic. i chose to draw a 'regular' astrolabe but it should be noted that there is also a mariner's version -- stars have generally been of tremendous importance for navigating the sea. 

i also wanted to include a certain small, ancient statuette that i fell in love with the moment i saw it in a museum in athens. it seems to look up towards the sky and therefore was nicknamed 'the stargazer.' there's several figurines of the same so-called kilia type, all of them equally cute and poetic.

finally, i had thought about connecting some of the yellow stars with lines to make it look like simplified drawings of constellations, but it didn't really work out. thankfully i could easily just draw a few artsy constellations in the backgrounds of both the painting and the sketch -- most of them are super random, but the sketch features mine and kubi's sun signs -- leo and scorpio, respectively. just for fun! 

if you have any questions about this design, feel free to ask below :>

// art + character © me.