sky and sea - 2026, April 26th

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Description

"sky and sea" is a drawing of Renko falling in the night sky, with Merry falling into the sea in the background.

Motive

I realised that I usually draw static drawings almost exclusively, so I wanted to draw something more dynamic. At the same time, I wanted to reference The Purest Sky and Sea from Retrospective 53 Minutes. As such, I had a sky and a sea in the drawing, but with the sea at the top to make it stand out more.

Process

First, I drew a simple sketch of Renko, who I then filled in with more details later. I also drew a sketch of Merry, but I ended up completing redoing her, posing her to be more suitable for someone falling in water. After that, I worked on the backgrounds, looking at multiple photo references while having a layer of fuzzy clouds mask the transition between the two areas. Finally, I spent most of the remaining time adding the bubbles and splashing effects to make it look like Merry was actually falliing into the water. For the bubbles, I just drew somewhat blob-shaped figures around her. For the splash, I looked at some references, and utilised the following:

• The splash starts all the way from the water surface, until it reaches the subject.
• The splash displaces water, leading to multiple "streams" of water forming around the splash.
• The splash is most foamy near the middle, with the edges having less foam.
• Therefore, the splash effect looks the brightest in the middle column, and resembles darker columns with foam outlines around the edges of the splash.

Finally, I added some more stars to the sky part to make it more obvious that it's a night sky and did some finishing touches.

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