Trying to draw my own version of "Ruler of the Sea"

Hello everyone in this wonderful community. I hope you’re all doing great. This is @wizardwarrior speaking, and I’m a huge fan of the game Splinterlands. Right now I’m feeling great and happy; I’m really excited and wanted to capture that joy—or maybe frustration, haha—since I’m not sure if it’ll be easy to digitally draw one of the game’s most iconic cards, which has been around for quite a few years, as it was one of the first reward cards the game released back then.

For me, this card isn't just a powerful unit in the Water deck; it's an icon from the Beta Rewards set that has always fascinated me with its striking design. Although I eventually stopped playing due to the sudden shift in the meta, I've decided to get back into the game and buy new cards—this time in the "Modern" format—without neglecting what truly brings me joy: drawing. So, if you want to join me in this step-by-step guide, let’s get started:

I'm sharing my version today, which is based on the card's original artwork. I don't have any professional-grade paints or expensive markers at home, so I'll only be using my graphics tablet and digital brushes in Photoshop. Amateur digital drawing is very honest because you can't hide mistakes with complicated effects, but you can really feel how deep the stroke is. The process took a long time—almost four hours of complete focus, during which the outside world didn't exist.

I began by using a blue brush with low opacity to make the first strokes on my digital canvas. The hardest part for me is figuring out the proportions of a character like the Ruler of the Sea. The transition from the human torso to the fish tail needs to be smooth but strong. It took me about 50 minutes to draw circles for the joints and red lines to show where the rays should go. There were references from the original card all over my work surface. It looks like a mess right now, with lines and scribbles all over the place. But every great drawing starts with a little chaos on the screen to show how big the character is.

This is when the character starts to come to life, but the line art was the hardest part for me to get right. I had a lot of trouble making sure the lines didn't look shaky. I used a firmer black brush to clean up the sketch, but my hand wasn't very steady today. But I chose to leave it as is because those little flaws give it a natural feel that a perfect vector drawing doesn't have. There are still some blue "ghost lines" where I had to redraw the stroke a few times. When your hand doesn't do what you want it to do at first, it's annoying, but that's how you learn. I spent an hour just figuring out what the flaming hair and the cape's drape meant.

This is where the color comes in, and this is where I almost went crazy trying to figure out the order of the layers in Photoshop. I completely forgot to use clipping masks, so I painted on layers I shouldn't have. This meant I had to manually erase and touch up the edges. I didn't use automatic gradients; instead, I painted the skin cyan blue and the ornaments yellow by hand. I used a digital oil brush with some texture for the shadows. I wanted to give the picture more depth without losing the look of an old book. I like that you can see the brush strokes, but some of the changes were a little too quick. To stay true to the original letter, they had to be very careful about the colors they chose.

I used brushes set to "Add Glow" blend mode to make the electrical energy coming from his hands stand out. I wanted the lightning bolts to seem real and alive. I signed my name @wizardwarrior freehand with the stylus in the corner to finish the work I did this afternoon. I know that the lines aren't even and that my "own version" has a rougher finish than the original, but I'm very happy that I was able to finish something today. Drawing Ruler of the Sea made me remember that even though my hand shakes sometimes, I still want to make things. I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I enjoyed going through it and enjoying every stroke!