"Golden" – Creature Illustration

Designed a firefly–lunar moth hybrid illustration for “Golden,” using warmth, glow, and delicate linework to mirror the pull—and eventual release—of a one-sided love.

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This illustration was created as the promotional creature artwork for my song “Golden,” a soulful, rhythmically bright R&B track about being drawn into a romantic relationship like a moth to a flame—only to realize it was one-sided and ultimately freeing to leave. The firefly–lunar moth hybrid symbolizes attraction to warmth and light, while subtly reflecting the tension between glow and burn, longing and independence.

The process began with a rough sketch in my sketchbook, which I scanned and refined in Adobe Illustrator. There, I developed expressive linework and adjusted line weights to give the creature delicacy and emotion. The finalized linework was imported into Photoshop for base color, shading, highlights, and texture. I layered gradients, blurred glowing lights, and subtle paper texture within the background to create a digital–analog hybrid feel, reinforcing the theme of warmth and emotional haze.

The warm earth tone and pastel palette was chosen to evoke nostalgia while maintaining a contemporary finish, aligning with the broader visual identity of both the single and the album it later became a part of.

The final illustration balances softness and luminosity with emotional undertones—capturing the feeling of being drawn toward something golden, only to realize you glow brighter on your own.