Skye

After decades spent in isolation from the rest of the world, birthdays — as most people seem to conceptualize them — are a rather foreign concept to Luneth. Her old temple did not celebrate individual birthdays. Rather, all Children of the Myst shared a single day to celebrate their rebirth as devout believers of the True Destiny. Perhaps it is merely human nature to treasure the perpetual passage of time with others, to fill the spaces in between with joy.

And she was clearly not made to be human, so her birthday was unnecessary to her.

That being said, she is willing to experience these strange customs and traditions surrounding birthdays with all the new people that have entered her life since she left her old one behind.

More about the art, I edited the above photo to have a dreamlike effect. The picture below is much closer to the actual colours of her ensemble:

She already had a few art nouveau elements in her everyday outfit, so I wanted to lean into it more here. I figured if she was going to be dancing in this outfit, the details should be sort of flowy like her movements.

Her jewelry looks white, resembling pearls, but I actually used a silver pen. That effect wasn’t intentional, but I ended up liking it.

The blue around her eyes was meant to be eyeliner, but it might've ended up looking more like eyeshadow. Oh well, I like that, too.

Her eyes aren't blue, rather, they are meant to be a cool grey, reminiscent of morning fog or the goddess of wisdom's eye colour. I think the blue in her clothing pulls everything a little bit blue.

Her pose and expression were drawn with the Mona Lisa in mind, how some viewer interpret her smile as happy and others view it to be sad. Luneth does not exhibit a lot of outward displays of emotion, so her expressions are usually harder to read. I felt that the ambiguity of the expression in the painting was fitting for her because of that. She may smile but it would be so subtle that you can't be too certain whether she was actually smiling at you or if it was a trick of the light, shadows putting something there where there's actually nothing.

The blue dress and dupatta were partly inspired by one of Aishwarya Rai’s looks in a film of hers (it's the light blue dress which is apparently from Aur Pyaar Hogaya, but others have suggested the outfit is from Kuch Naa Kaho or Dil Ka Rishta, so I'm not entirely sure — I couldn't find that exact look in any of the three movies mentioned :/) and Preeti Jhangiani’s blue dress in Mohabbatein. I thought the pale blue and sparkly silver details would look so elegant on Luneth!

The full outfit is on the left and one colour test I did for the right. I really was debating between light blue and dark blue because she just looks so good in a dark royal blue, too. Ultimately, I went with the light blue because it seems to make her glow like moonlight — which is quite fitting for her name.

And finally, here are some alternative makeup and hairstyles I was thinking of for her formal look before I settled on the braid:

The last one is from her past oracle design which I was planning on redesigning anyway, but I knew that I wanted to reuse the updo somewhere because it suits her so well! Maybe I’ll use these different hairstyles in other drawings of her in more formal outfits.