The Gambler
Cithera: “Would you look at that, four of a kind… I win again. Want to play another round?”
Happy New Year, everyone! 2021 was very busy for me, but I’m going to build this website just as much, if not more, than I did previously. This will be the first entry I’ve written in 2022, but also the first entry I’ve written since announcing the beta for the website on Christmas. It’s surreal to me, but I need to write about this first.
My first drawing last year was celebratory, but I didn’t have anything prepared for this year. I dedicated most of my time to this piece, and since my art takes a long time, I didn’t plan in advance for today. Despite that, I finished this piece, which I posted a WIP for on Thursday, on New Year’s. It’s oddly prophetic, in a sense; I joined Twitter halfway through 2020, and my piece for New Year’s celebrated nearly six months on the platform, but also my dedication to posting art and how committed I was to improve artistically. In 2022, I know where I stand and my focus is not just how long I’ve been on the platform, but finding my niche and keeping the ball rolling.
Cithera was one of my breakout characters last year (The other being Lylatt). She was initially a filler character I designed to be Gizmo’s partner, since it didn’t feel right to redesign him and have him stand alone. That mentality created Cithera, and just about seven months later, I’ve given her a personality and made her a foil not just to Aqua, Lylatt, and Kesshō, but to Gizmo as well. I pictured her as “the brawn to his brains, the street-smart to his book-smart”, and she has a rough-and-tumble personality to match.
This evolved into Cithera becoming a gambler. I’ve played enough video poker to learn the rules for Texas Hold ‘em, and I’ve learned of other casino games such as Blackjack and Craps. Cithera’s street smarts factors into her gambling skills, as she can see through other’s poker faces while keeping hers under wraps. I thought of her antennae being a tell and thought of drawing her with a feathered cap to match her dress, but that didn’t get very far. I gave her a simple black dress and a silver necklace instead of the black hat, and I shifted my focus to her body language.
Cithera is the only character I have with four arms, so I wanted all four of them to be represented in this piece. Her upper right hand is by her chin and her left is resting on the table, while her lower right is revealing her cards and her lower left is counting poker chips. It makes her look smug, if slightly overconfident, in her skills, which was intentional. It took a while to get her wings right, but it took even longer to draw the markings on her body. Regal moths in real life have yellow markings all over their body, but I’ve only drawn Cithera with her jacket on, so I had to add markings on her upper arms since they were covered by her sleeves. I feel like I did well here, and these will carry over in future drawings without her jacket.
To wrap this up, I’m not great at backgrounds, but I added plenty of little details to liven this up; the background has a lot of glowing effects, from the wallpaper to the window, the chips on the table mostly follow the coloration of real life poker chips, and if you look closely at the cards, she is the queen of diamonds and Gizmo cameos as the king of clubs. Not to mention, a four-of-a-kind, all aces with a king kicker, is probably one of the best hands someone can get in hold ‘em. If I had more time and skill with backgrounds, I would add more tables (and maybe a bar) with better shading to give the piece more depth. For now, I hope you enjoy the first solo drawing of Cithera I have made, and I hope everyone reading this starts the year off strong!