HOME | DD

Description
My Website | My Book | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi (Now with Membership Tiers for as little as $1 a Month!) | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

Sparklers, I'll be quite honest with you that A. This very nearly didn't get posted at all—In fact I am actually a day late for "Week 1," as I'll discuss more in a moment, and B. This was definitely not at all what I thought my next Winx-related art post would be when I posted Carolina On Ice ...Mostly because the event it's for wouldn't publicly exist for another 3 days at the time, but even if that wasn't true, I don't think I started seeing posts about it until after Thanksgiving.

In any case, the title is your first clue as to what exactly this is: Winxsona Winter is an event being hosted by wittywinx over on Instagram ; Starting December 1st and running alllll the way through February 10th. Each week You draw your "Winxsona," or you if you were dropped into the world of Winx Club tomorrow, in a different transformation. Naturally, Magic Winx [or as Nickelodeon would incorrectly have you believe, Charmix] is up first.

I had some other things going on this week that had to take priority over this [one of which you'll hopefully see the fruits of soon, the other you'll see...eventually...], so even though I did manage to get this finished yesterday, which was supposed to be the last Day of "Week 1" and today is supposed to start Week 2, I finished it so late in the evening that I ultimately made the decision to wait and post it today.

And I'll be fully transparent once more and tell you all that unlike most challenges/events like this that I take on, I'm currently undecided if I'll see this one all the way through to the end for personal reasons, but at the very least, even if I end up with more pieces like this one that are technically late, I want to try and make it through Week 6. So if I can do that, we're looking at roughly 5 more drawings in this "Winxsona" series when all is said and done.

On the flipside, one of the primary reasons I want to try and participate at all is because, as some of you may remember, a "Winxsona" is far from a foreign concept to me. In fact, we pretty much started off the year in all the places I post art with that very concept when I made You Magical Winx to celebrate the franchise's 18th Anniversary. This coincidentally also means I have a lot of the "heavy lifting" figured out for next week's Winxsona piece.

Even if I only make it through Week 3, I'll effectively end the year on a very similar note, and I rather like that idea.

And of course, I think I've made it somewhat clear I would like to get back into drawing Winx stuff regularly, and since my OCs are currently in development heck, this is probably the next best way to get in some practice with the art style with less pressure involved.

To that end, apparently, the last couple of pieces I've made have ingrained more muscle memory in me than I thought because I breezed through this one a lot quicker than I assumed I would—The most challenging elements were the wings and the background, and everything else felt pretty straight-forward.

It helps that since this is supposed to be me, for the clothing designs I can mostly just go with what I like/things that resemble stuff I would actually wear, and since faux screenshots are becoming my bread-and-butter with Winx artwork, depending on the pose and framing I don't even have to draw everything if I don't want to.

This piece is a prime example of that—I did have a general idea for shoes but really didn't feel like putting a lot of effort into drawing them, and I wanted a pose that would work reasonably well for either flying or as part of a transformation sequence. [I wasn't sure what kind of background I was going to want at that point.]

I've been unofficially "collecting" screenshots of the show on Pinterest kinda for purposes such as this, and pretty quickly one of Stella in her pajamas from Season 2 came to mind because "Weren't her feet mostly cut off in that one or something?" And then as you can see, the pose lends itself pretty well to a flying scene, which was one of the primary reasons I saved it.

And though I didn't plan it that way, this pose also cut out a lot of struggle for the skirt, as well. Half of the skirt's movement depends on one of the legs, and the other half only makes sense to billow outward like the hair, so I didn't have to worry about how many folds there should be in the fabric or where exactly they should hang, etc. And as much as I've grown to enjoy wearing skirts and having characters that would also enjoy wearing flowy skirts, that has always been the biggest challenge for me when drawing them.

To that end, it's more of a struggle when emulating Winx style since they don't actually do much with folds or ruffles in the fabric until Season 3. Most of the skirts until then are the kind that don't rely much on folds or ruffles to look right.

Oh, I should probably explain what kind I was going for here that would've potentially been a problem for another pose, shouldn't I?

It's not a terribly complicated concept; I was going for an A-line or Circle Skirt-type dress like what I drew myself in for Meet the Artist 2.0 [though the colors for that one are almost the opposite of what's going on here]. Like I said, while in middle school and most of high school I would not dream of wearing a skirt or dress, these days I've found a new appreciation for them, and that's a-line/circle skirt/skater dress variety is what I favor the most.

While not as obvious, this may also seem a little familiar since aside from the Enchantix I already designed for You Magical Winx , I was picturing the same dress that I also had in mind when I drew I am Myself, an Elf , which I own in real life. The real dress feels very Winx-adjacent since it's primarily a soft blue and pink, semi-casual, and has majestic unicorns all over it.

You can see I brought in the pink and blue easily, but since the real dress has a pretty basic t-shirt-like construction on the top, I made some alterations so it would be a little less boring for a Magic Winx dress—transparent puff sleeves instead of t-shirt cap sleeves, "ribbon" detailing under the bust and at the hem, and "princess seams" down the sides, though you can only see one from this angle. And then I brought in the darker blue from the Enchantix design both for a little more variety and also because I wanted to have some sort of nod to how I like to mix lighter and darker elements together in both literal and metaphorical senses.

From a "proper" character design perspective, the dark blue isn't the best idea since my hair is such a dark blue-y purple already and it would be better to keep the outfit light overall for contrast, but the goal here isn't solid character design, it's just what I like, so that's what we're going with.

Which, speaking of, I thought the hair was going to be more of a pain than it ended up being. In the past I've had issues with trying to manage long hair—where does it all go?? how does it fold??—in drawings, but this time I think I struggled slightly more with the bangs as opposed to the back of the hair, mostly because I wanted to stick with roughly the bang placement I used for Meet the Artist 2.0 ...But I don't recall having tried to draw that same hair structure from the side before.

Add to that the extra challenge of wanting the style here to fit with how the Winx cartoon usually handles bangs from the side like this. It definitely took a few tries before I felt happy with the shape, but fortunately, I did work out something in the end that I'd called suitable enough.

Jumping back to the almost-not-there shoes, you can't tell but the idea is pretty "classic" pump heels, and the heel/bottom of the shoe is just a different color from the part that covers the foot. I don't actually wear shoes like that in real life [mostly because as cute as a lot of them look I have yet to find any truly comfortable ones at a stomach-able price point], but ballet flats don't really jive with the early seasons of Winx unless they're doing actual ballet, and they really only ever wear anything resembling Converse for casual outfits...And sorta Believix, but to me, that's still a bit of a stretch comparison.

So in my mind essentially what I did was take my more typical ballet flats and add heels to "Winx-fy" them. It's still technically not a perfect solution since the more common "Magic Winx Shoe" would be a type of boot, but...eh.

The other accessories are more straightforward. Choker: I wear Chokers pretty often and more than any other type of necklace. Bracelet and ring on the right hand: We kinda just talked about the ring I wear all the time , and I also perpetually have either a watch or hair tie [if not both] on that same wrist.

The, uh, "crown" is really just a series of ovals. When I wear the unicorn dress in real-life, I have a low-profile silver tiara I usually pair it with, and I wanted to emulate that here. The trouble is Bloom already has her signature rounded-point tiara, and it's kinda difficult to design a similar rounded tiara without it looking like a blatant copy of hers. This was the best compromise I could think of.

Now, about those wings...

You'd think since my "Mystic Wings" that I more or less plaster on everything these days were originally conceptualized for what was at the time essentially an early "Winxsona" for me that they'd translate back into the Winx style fairly easily. I regret to inform you: Nope! Not at all!

The chief problem is that compared to the typical Magic Winx wings, my "Mystic Wings" as they're normally drawn are far more narrow and generally much softer/rounded in shape.

The round/softness isn't as big of a deal since Musa's Magic Winx wings are more rounded, as are some of the background fairies' in the show. It really was the difference in width that posed a problem. I tried probably 3-4 different sketches [not counting smaller alterations made to each sketch before I decided to scrap it and try again] before I was able to get mostly the final shape you see here. And I say mostly because even though I was happy with it on the wing-only file, when I dropped them in the full image, the exact proportion of the bottom wing section felt off, so I had to warp it just a little bit. Though I'm not entirely sure how much this specific pose may or may not have influenced that—It could be my brain was insisting the wings needed a smidge more dynamism since this pose is a little more dynamic. If that's not it though, your guess is as good as mine.

Oh, I did also have to alter the color once I brought the wings over as well. Originally, I used the same colors as Layla/Aisha's Magic Winx wings since hers are slightly more on the purple side, but the palette just looked too dark and gray next to the other colors I have going on here. I used Procreate's Gradient mapping to fix it here on the final at first, then later had to go back into the wings-only file and manually fix them there since the outlines ended up being too thick for my liking and I had to re-do those anyway.

Similarly to the wings, you probably look at this background and think it doesn't look that complicated. Generally, the concept isn't, but the execution was certainly tricker than I expected it to be.

I really didn't want to overcomplicate things since aside from the wings, the rest of the drawing had gone reasonably well up to this point. So I figured a pretty basic sky background in the seafoam-ish colors the sky usually is when the girls are around Alfea in the daytime would work just fine and not be too difficult to replicate.

The general color and that little bit of "landscape" stuff peaking in at the bottom? Correct. I fussed with the hill on the right-hand side for a bit, but not a huge deal.

Those ding-dang clouds, on the other hand...

Ultimately, I did cave and just use a stamp-style cloud brush in a couple of overlapping layers to get "still not right but it's kinda close and I'm tired of messing with it." But only after I'd tried and failed to do something more organic with other brushes several times over.

I think what I really need to do is just spend some time studying and replicating some exact Winx Club clouds and potentially try and make a custom brush or two. I can already see defining elements to the clouds, my issue is just I don't know of an existing brush that can replicate the look in one step, and I'm just too lazy to figure out the exact combination to do it successfully in multiple steps. So making a custom brush that can get it right in 1-2 steps every time feels like the best solution.

Rest assured Sparklers, if I do end up going that route in the future I will definitely post the brushes so you can use them too, if you wish.

For the here and now, the clouds definitely lean too far on the realistic side, especially next to the "landscape" bits, but as noted already I was tired of messing with them and I've agreed with myself that it's not that important since they're not meant to be the main focus here anyway.

The final touch was a nice magic glow around "me" and some magic in the hand. I was more concerned about the glow and I found it a bit curious when I went back to looking at reference screenshots and noticed it. Sincerely, I just hadn't consciously noticed before that even in their Magic Winx, the girls often glow when they're about to cast a spell. The few instances I had previously noticed were usually in Enchantix or beyond, or in very choice high-energy moments where you'd kind of expect them to glow.

These screenshots I was looking at were, as far as I can tell, less intense battle moments—"more casual" in a warped sort of sense. So that's why they intrigued me.

The magic in the hand wasn't strictly necessary and I'm not entirely sure it makes a ton of sense to be there, but the image felt incomplete without it, so it stays. I'm thinking me/she had her hands out in front with the little glowing ball first appeared, and then circled her arms up and around to the back, which is why the magic "tail" is curved that way.

...And I think that's everything that needed explaining, explained. The only other things I did that haven't explained here I either explained for Carolina On Ice or Fairy Familiar Face ; Just the very last final filter touches for that "authentic" screen shot feel.

If I don't look at the clouds too closely, I'm really quite pleased with the outcome. I feel like that's the one thing really holding it back from looking like a screenshot from the show itself, and that I think says a lot about my progress with the Winx style overall...Though I don't want to dwell on that too much since I sorta feel like I already covered the long and short of it with the last two Winx pieces I made, which were more involved projects by comparison.

I had to admit though, finishing this one up does make me more excited for the upcoming weeks, despite this one being right at the end since I had some other stuff to do this week that took priority. So maybe I'll end up doing all 8 Winxsona Winter Weeks yet, if this excitement continues after each successive piece. Only time will tell, I suppose...

In the meantime, I'm really just looking forward to seeing how much art I can get done and posted between now and New Years', Winx or otherwise, since I've got some things in the backlog and quite a few fresh ideas bouncing around in my head...

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings
Winx Club © Rainbow S.p.A.

Sparkle Brushes: Enchantix + Season 3 Resource Pack

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | My Book | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

Description
My Website | My Book | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi (Now with Membership Tiers for as little as $1 a Month!) | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram

Sparklers, I'll be quite honest with you that A. This very nearly didn't get posted at all—In fact I am actually a day late for "Week 1," as I'll discuss more in a moment, and B. This was definitely not at all what I thought my next Winx-related art post would be when I posted Carolina On Ice ...Mostly because the event it's for wouldn't publicly exist for another 3 days at the time, but even if that wasn't true, I don't think I started seeing posts about it until after Thanksgiving.

In any case, the title is your first clue as to what exactly this is: Winxsona Winter is an event being hosted by wittywinx over on Instagram ; Starting December 1st and running alllll the way through February 10th. Each week You draw your "Winxsona," or you if you were dropped into the world of Winx Club tomorrow, in a different transformation. Naturally, Magic Winx [or as Nickelodeon would incorrectly have you believe, Charmix] is up first.

I had some other things going on this week that had to take priority over this [one of which you'll hopefully see the fruits of soon, the other you'll see...eventually...], so even though I did manage to get this finished yesterday, which was supposed to be the last Day of "Week 1" and today is supposed to start Week 2, I finished it so late in the evening that I ultimately made the decision to wait and post it today.

And I'll be fully transparent once more and tell you all that unlike most challenges/events like this that I take on, I'm currently undecided if I'll see this one all the way through to the end for personal reasons, but at the very least, even if I end up with more pieces like this one that are technically late, I want to try and make it through Week 6. So if I can do that, we're looking at roughly 5 more drawings in this "Winxsona" series when all is said and done.

On the flipside, one of the primary reasons I want to try and participate at all is because, as some of you may remember, a "Winxsona" is far from a foreign concept to me. In fact, we pretty much started off the year in all the places I post art with that very concept when I made You Magical Winx to celebrate the franchise's 18th Anniversary. This coincidentally also means I have a lot of the "heavy lifting" figured out for next week's Winxsona piece.

Even if I only make it through Week 3, I'll effectively end the year on a very similar note, and I rather like that idea.

And of course, I think I've made it somewhat clear I would like to get back into drawing Winx stuff regularly, and since my OCs are currently in development heck, this is probably the next best way to get in some practice with the art style with less pressure involved.

To that end, apparently, the last couple of pieces I've made have ingrained more muscle memory in me than I thought because I breezed through this one a lot quicker than I assumed I would—The most challenging elements were the wings and the background, and everything else felt pretty straight-forward.

It helps that since this is supposed to be me, for the clothing designs I can mostly just go with what I like/things that resemble stuff I would actually wear, and since faux screenshots are becoming my bread-and-butter with Winx artwork, depending on the pose and framing I don't even have to draw everything if I don't want to.

This piece is a prime example of that—I did have a general idea for shoes but really didn't feel like putting a lot of effort into drawing them, and I wanted a pose that would work reasonably well for either flying or as part of a transformation sequence. [I wasn't sure what kind of background I was going to want at that point.]

I've been unofficially "collecting" screenshots of the show on Pinterest kinda for purposes such as this, and pretty quickly one of Stella in her pajamas from Season 2 came to mind because "Weren't her feet mostly cut off in that one or something?" And then as you can see, the pose lends itself pretty well to a flying scene, which was one of the primary reasons I saved it.

And though I didn't plan it that way, this pose also cut out a lot of struggle for the skirt, as well. Half of the skirt's movement depends on one of the legs, and the other half only makes sense to billow outward like the hair, so I didn't have to worry about how many folds there should be in the fabric or where exactly they should hang, etc. And as much as I've grown to enjoy wearing skirts and having characters that would also enjoy wearing flowy skirts, that has always been the biggest challenge for me when drawing them.

To that end, it's more of a struggle when emulating Winx style since they don't actually do much with folds or ruffles in the fabric until Season 3. Most of the skirts until then are the kind that don't rely much on folds or ruffles to look right.

Oh, I should probably explain what kind I was going for here that would've potentially been a problem for another pose, shouldn't I?

It's not a terribly complicated concept; I was going for an A-line or Circle Skirt-type dress like what I drew myself in for Meet the Artist 2.0 [though the colors for that one are almost the opposite of what's going on here]. Like I said, while in middle school and most of high school I would not dream of wearing a skirt or dress, these days I've found a new appreciation for them, and that's a-line/circle skirt/skater dress variety is what I favor the most.

While not as obvious, this may also seem a little familiar since aside from the Enchantix I already designed for You Magical Winx , I was picturing the same dress that I also had in mind when I drew I am Myself, an Elf , which I own in real life. The real dress feels very Winx-adjacent since it's primarily a soft blue and pink, semi-casual, and has majestic unicorns all over it.

You can see I brought in the pink and blue easily, but since the real dress has a pretty basic t-shirt-like construction on the top, I made some alterations so it would be a little less boring for a Magic Winx dress—transparent puff sleeves instead of t-shirt cap sleeves, "ribbon" detailing under the bust and at the hem, and "princess seams" down the sides, though you can only see one from this angle. And then I brought in the darker blue from the Enchantix design both for a little more variety and also because I wanted to have some sort of nod to how I like to mix lighter and darker elements together in both literal and metaphorical senses.

From a "proper" character design perspective, the dark blue isn't the best idea since my hair is such a dark blue-y purple already and it would be better to keep the outfit light overall for contrast, but the goal here isn't solid character design, it's just what I like, so that's what we're going with.

Which, speaking of, I thought the hair was going to be more of a pain than it ended up being. In the past I've had issues with trying to manage long hair—where does it all go?? how does it fold??—in drawings, but this time I think I struggled slightly more with the bangs as opposed to the back of the hair, mostly because I wanted to stick with roughly the bang placement I used for Meet the Artist 2.0 ...But I don't recall having tried to draw that same hair structure from the side before.

Add to that the extra challenge of wanting the style here to fit with how the Winx cartoon usually handles bangs from the side like this. It definitely took a few tries before I felt happy with the shape, but fortunately, I did work out something in the end that I'd called suitable enough.

Jumping back to the almost-not-there shoes, you can't tell but the idea is pretty "classic" pump heels, and the heel/bottom of the shoe is just a different color from the part that covers the foot. I don't actually wear shoes like that in real life [mostly because as cute as a lot of them look I have yet to find any truly comfortable ones at a stomach-able price point], but ballet flats don't really jive with the early seasons of Winx unless they're doing actual ballet, and they really only ever wear anything resembling Converse for casual outfits...And sorta Believix, but to me, that's still a bit of a stretch comparison.

So in my mind essentially what I did was take my more typical ballet flats and add heels to "Winx-fy" them. It's still technically not a perfect solution since the more common "Magic Winx Shoe" would be a type of boot, but...eh.

The other accessories are more straightforward. Choker: I wear Chokers pretty often and more than any other type of necklace. Bracelet and ring on the right hand: We kinda just talked about the ring I wear all the time , and I also perpetually have either a watch or hair tie [if not both] on that same wrist.

The, uh, "crown" is really just a series of ovals. When I wear the unicorn dress in real-life, I have a low-profile silver tiara I usually pair it with, and I wanted to emulate that here. The trouble is Bloom already has her signature rounded-point tiara, and it's kinda difficult to design a similar rounded tiara without it looking like a blatant copy of hers. This was the best compromise I could think of.

Now, about those wings...

You'd think since my "Mystic Wings" that I more or less plaster on everything these days were originally conceptualized for what was at the time essentially an early "Winxsona" for me that they'd translate back into the Winx style fairly easily. I regret to inform you: Nope! Not at all!

The chief problem is that compared to the typical Magic Winx wings, my "Mystic Wings" as they're normally drawn are far more narrow and generally much softer/rounded in shape.

The round/softness isn't as big of a deal since Musa's Magic Winx wings are more rounded, as are some of the background fairies' in the show. It really was the difference in width that posed a problem. I tried probably 3-4 different sketches [not counting smaller alterations made to each sketch before I decided to scrap it and try again] before I was able to get mostly the final shape you see here. And I say mostly because even though I was happy with it on the wing-only file, when I dropped them in the full image, the exact proportion of the bottom wing section felt off, so I had to warp it just a little bit. Though I'm not entirely sure how much this specific pose may or may not have influenced that—It could be my brain was insisting the wings needed a smidge more dynamism since this pose is a little more dynamic. If that's not it though, your guess is as good as mine.

Oh, I did also have to alter the color once I brought the wings over as well. Originally, I used the same colors as Layla/Aisha's Magic Winx wings since hers are slightly more on the purple side, but the palette just looked too dark and gray next to the other colors I have going on here. I used Procreate's Gradient mapping to fix it here on the final at first, then later had to go back into the wings-only file and manually fix them there since the outlines ended up being too thick for my liking and I had to re-do those anyway.

Similarly to the wings, you probably look at this background and think it doesn't look that complicated. Generally, the concept isn't, but the execution was certainly tricker than I expected it to be.

I really didn't want to overcomplicate things since aside from the wings, the rest of the drawing had gone reasonably well up to this point. So I figured a pretty basic sky background in the seafoam-ish colors the sky usually is when the girls are around Alfea in the daytime would work just fine and not be too difficult to replicate.

The general color and that little bit of "landscape" stuff peaking in at the bottom? Correct. I fussed with the hill on the right-hand side for a bit, but not a huge deal.

Those ding-dang clouds, on the other hand...

Ultimately, I did cave and just use a stamp-style cloud brush in a couple of overlapping layers to get "still not right but it's kinda close and I'm tired of messing with it." But only after I'd tried and failed to do something more organic with other brushes several times over.

I think what I really need to do is just spend some time studying and replicating some exact Winx Club clouds and potentially try and make a custom brush or two. I can already see defining elements to the clouds, my issue is just I don't know of an existing brush that can replicate the look in one step, and I'm just too lazy to figure out the exact combination to do it successfully in multiple steps. So making a custom brush that can get it right in 1-2 steps every time feels like the best solution.

Rest assured Sparklers, if I do end up going that route in the future I will definitely post the brushes so you can use them too, if you wish.

For the here and now, the clouds definitely lean too far on the realistic side, especially next to the "landscape" bits, but as noted already I was tired of messing with them and I've agreed with myself that it's not that important since they're not meant to be the main focus here anyway.

The final touch was a nice magic glow around "me" and some magic in the hand. I was more concerned about the glow and I found it a bit curious when I went back to looking at reference screenshots and noticed it. Sincerely, I just hadn't consciously noticed before that even in their Magic Winx, the girls often glow when they're about to cast a spell. The few instances I had previously noticed were usually in Enchantix or beyond, or in very choice high-energy moments where you'd kind of expect them to glow.

These screenshots I was looking at were, as far as I can tell, less intense battle moments—"more casual" in a warped sort of sense. So that's why they intrigued me.

The magic in the hand wasn't strictly necessary and I'm not entirely sure it makes a ton of sense to be there, but the image felt incomplete without it, so it stays. I'm thinking me/she had her hands out in front with the little glowing ball first appeared, and then circled her arms up and around to the back, which is why the magic "tail" is curved that way.

...And I think that's everything that needed explaining, explained. The only other things I did that haven't explained here I either explained for Carolina On Ice or Fairy Familiar Face ; Just the very last final filter touches for that "authentic" screen shot feel.

If I don't look at the clouds too closely, I'm really quite pleased with the outcome. I feel like that's the one thing really holding it back from looking like a screenshot from the show itself, and that I think says a lot about my progress with the Winx style overall...Though I don't want to dwell on that too much since I sorta feel like I already covered the long and short of it with the last two Winx pieces I made, which were more involved projects by comparison.

I had to admit though, finishing this one up does make me more excited for the upcoming weeks, despite this one being right at the end since I had some other stuff to do this week that took priority. So maybe I'll end up doing all 8 Winxsona Winter Weeks yet, if this excitement continues after each successive piece. Only time will tell, I suppose...

In the meantime, I'm really just looking forward to seeing how much art I can get done and posted between now and New Years', Winx or otherwise, since I've got some things in the backlog and quite a few fresh ideas bouncing around in my head...

Artwork © me, MysticSparkleWings
Winx Club © Rainbow S.p.A.

Sparkle Brushes: Enchantix + Season 3 Resource Pack

Where to find me & my artwork:
My Website | My Book | Commission Info + Prices | Ko-Fi | RedBubble | Twitter | Tumblr | Instagram