One of my favorite projects from this past semester was assigned in my General Illustration 2 class. The prompt was simple: roll three dice and use the corresponding list of words from each die as the basis for an illustration. The words I chose to focus on were satisfaction, antagonism, and methodical. I also had a few other inspirations in mind which I had been meaning to use prior to the assignment. I managed to incorporate them because this project was relatively freeform. The first is 90s shoujo anime. The second is the general concept of corn mazes (I had recently been in one at night and felt like using the location somehow in my art). Unbeknownst to me, a secret third inspiration was the anime Code Geass (I didn’t realize how similar my character looked to Code Geass’ Nunnally until halfway through the process—so I suppose this is Nunnally fan art now). Notably, the character designers for Code Geass was the manga author group CLAMP, who typically make shojo manga. 

My basic thought process was that I wanted to draw a shojo anime girl covered in blood in a corn maze, and I wanted to use metallic gold ink on the border. From my prompt words satisfaction, antagonism, and methodical, I got the murder idea, but I did use a few of the other prompt words in the illustration, though in less obvious ways. The moon cycle is very loosely based on the prompt words endurance and longevity, and I hid the Centauri constellation in the sky, which, according to some random website that I trusted with reckless abandon, represents wisdom, another of my prompt words. The corn ended up connecting nicely with my prompt word growth. 

I started by sketching digitally, since I had no idea what I was going to include in the illustration at that point. After refining my sketch tightly, I printed it and traced it onto watercolor paper. I think I may have used the wrong side of the paper—either that or my paints just did not want to cooperate with me. There were a few points in the process where I thought I would have to start over just because of how the paint was acting on the paper. Thankfully, it turned out okay, though there are sections where I would like to alter the texture.