Meet Cithera
It's been a while, hasn't it? I finished Lylatt's character sheet in the middle of January, and with one character sheet left, you think it would be done quickly, right? Wrong. Cithera's design is complicated even without her wings and school got busy quickly for me. To put things into perspective, I finished Lylatt's character sheet within the first two weeks of school while Cithera's character sheet was finished during my spring break.
These character sheets have been fun to do, but I want to draw other things for a while; I have ideas to sketch out, characters to design, and even more I want to redesign. Not to mention, I have plans to continue building this website that I haven't gone through yet because I haven't had enough time. Thankfully, I'm almost done with school and I should have a lot more time to focus on art and coding going forward... Key word, should. I have no idea what the future holds once I graduate, but this isn't the time nor the place to worry about those kinds of things. I should explain my methods for going about this piece.
Prior to this piece, I've drawn Cithera twice in the past two years: the first time was last year's piece called "Packing," and the other was 2022's "The Gambler," but that piece is only from 2022 because I finished it on New Year's Day. I referenced every drawing of Cithera I had, but I quickly realized something with every piece she was in except for the previous two; her lower arms began immediately underneath or behind her upper arms and her torso's proportions didn't properly accommodate her lower arms, causing her upper arms to obscure them. With that in mind, I followed the same approach I used for "Packing," making her torso larger and moving her lower arms closer to her waist. This approach also influenced size of her waist and legs, making them larger than they were in her previous iterations, but I think this is a better look for her.
This piece borrows heavily from her design in "Packing," actually. I really liked how the black tank top and light blue jean shorts looked on her, so I made that her default outfit and moved her fingerless gloves to her upper hands. She originally wore a white tank top and brown pleather jacket with sleeves covering her upper arms, darker jean shorts, and had fingerless gloves on her lower hands that reminded me of which set of hands I was drawing. I tried keeping her gloves on her lower arms initially, but I moved them to her upper arms after seeing how much better they looked that way. I thought of giving both sets of arms fingerless gloves before considering it excessive and deciding against it.
I wanted to incorporate some of Cithera's personality into her pose; she's aloof, icy, and addicted to her phone, yet she is smart, adventurous, and loves to party, It felt natural to want to have her look like she was in her element, so I had her take a selfie while holding a persimmon cocktail (those exist, look them up). I had trouble shading her martini glass and it took me a while to get the splash effect to look how I wanted it to, but I'm happy with how they turned out. I'm also proud of how I spoofed the Apple logo on her phone, making it a watermelon slice instead, but it's probably hard to tell because her hand covers most of it.
Designing Cithera's character sheet was easy for me, as I knew what colors I wanted to use and what design I wanted to have behind her. Writing her descriptions, on the other hand, took a while. This is because Aqua and Nimbus have seniority while I wrote enough notes for Lylatt to write two short stories featuring her. This left Cithera underdeveloped by comparison, with only a vague idea of her personality. After days of thinking, I was able to put together a comprehensive list of her likes and dislikes. I had trouble with her facts as well, but it was due to character limits rather than being unable to come up with anything.
With all that said, it's crazy for me to think that all four character sheets are done. I have so many ideas on the backburner that it'll be tough picking out my next idea, but I should pace myself for now because I dedicated almost my entire spring break to finishing this and I'd like to relax for a little bit before starting something new. Maybe I'll stick to smaller doodles for a bit before taking up another big project and focus on engaging with other artists on social media. Whatever comes next, I look forward to showing it off here!