Work in Progress Background

Was having a bit of hard time coming up with something to paint or draw today, but I eventually did get an idea of what I could work on. But I will showcase that next week. For now here is the background. First time working on a wet reflective surface. Really want to learn how to do them in all mediums.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Random Fight

Just a practice piece so that I can play around more with screentones, hatching and whatnot using Clip studio Paint and Photoshop. The background is of a cool area in Downtown Denver. I made it into a screen tone using Photoshop’s filter, sketch, halftone option. I inked and then hatched it using Clip Studio. Characters are from an idea of a story I want to work on.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Best Smile DarkCloudXERO entry

Yesterday night I learned about the Clip Studio contest, with the theme “The Best Smile”. I only had a couple of hours to work on it today since I had some obligations I had to take care of so I didn’t really have any real plans and just started painting. Although not required I decided to use Clip Studio Paint and was amazed at how good it felt to use their oil paint option. I think I may actually like it more than Corel Painter since the oil paint size is controlled by the pen pressure. I’ll have to play around with it more.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Miyabi Natsuyaki’s New Year Temple Visit 2021 watercolor

I finally finished. I guess because there’s so many details it took quite a bit of time. But overal I like the way it turned out. The Holbein Watercolors do exactly what I want them to do, I don’t think I can go back to any other watercolors at this point. And this is using Master’s Touch watercolor paper which isn’t really that good quality (although I highly recommend it since it’s the best paper at the price range). At some point I should try painting on some higher quality paper which I tend to neglect since they are, you know, quite expensive. But I feel confident enough to try it now. Once I again I am using watered down ink for the outlines which works really good when applying color on top of it since it’s also translucent and reacts with the color one applies on top. This leaves it open to apply more color to the outline or ink to make it darker. Although I did add some shadows to give the background some 3dimentinality, I decided to make Miyabi’s colors flat so as to not overwork the painting which I tend to do. Doing so gives the finished painting a much cleaner look that pops out quite nicely (Thank you Little Thunder for showcasing your artwork! I always learn so much looking at it.).

I really love the colors that Miyabi chose for her kimono and her makeup. They really fit well with the background colors. I was planning to add the color variations to the kimono. But as I was playing around with the way Mars Violet interacted with the yellow mixture I used for the Kimono base color, I decided it would look best as a simple color. Hopefully I managed to replicate Miyabi’s beauty through my brush.

We are well into the New Year now, so I will now focus on some winter drawings/paintings before the season ends.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Miyabi Natsuyaki New Year Temple Visit 2021 line art

Miyabi Natsuyaki New Year Temple Visit 2021 line art

I really loved Miyabi’s New Years photos. She looks really beautiful with her kimono. She mentioned it was a retro look, so I’m guessing this is a Showa era style? It really suits her. She looks so aesthetic with the shrine in the background. I think an 80s/90s anime style would look good but I feel it will also look good in watercolor. Just recently on her Twitter she mentioned that she has been getting nostalgic for Berryz Koubou. She also gave the impression that there might be a reunion of some kind.
・:*+.(( °ω° ))/.:+

Thank you so much for this past year Miyabi, hopefully this year will be great for you.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Momochi’s Dangerous Upward Glance Watercolor

I’m going to be practicing with watercolors for a bit. I wan’t to see what I can do with the media. The first watercolor of the year is Momochi, using the first drawing of the year. I was a bit worried as I was painting but things were becoming more clear as I kept going. She looks so cute. It’s a bit of a shame the background didn’t get picked up by the scanner.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Momochi’s Dangerous Upward Glance inked

Happy New Year 2021!

For the first drawing of 2021 I drew Momochi. My original plan was to paint it with watercolors but I decided to make two versions of it, an inked version and a painted one. The painted version I plan to do next. As I thought, the DVD Magazines had plenty of references for me. The upward glance she gave while travelling up the mountain was killer. It’s probably even more potent if she did that in person.

I used a mix of ink and in some sections a more diluted ink for sections I wanted to keep light but still give shadows to. This time I made sure to hatch it slower so that the end result would look cleaner. My plan is to continue doing that from now on. The process didn’t take that much longer anyway. I got really lucky that Momochi’s face wasn’t ruined actually, a huge blob of ink just poured out of my pen below her chin. Luckily that section was supposed to be blacked out and the ink didn’t spread to her face. I won’t lie, it was an agonizing 25-30 seconds while I tried to find some tissue paper to soak up the ink before it began going everywhere. I feel like the drawing wasn’t complete until I added some blush lines, I really like the end result.

Hope you guys had a great start to the year. Here’s hoping for the best.

Happy New Year!

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Goku and Bulma’s New Year’s 2021

The idea I originally had was of Goku returning to Mexico but I decided to to have Bulma tag along this time. In fact, she was the first one to be painted. Well, her car was, then her. The car is from the first chapter of Dragon Ball. Looking online, it seems the car is a Renault 5 Turbo. I’m always amazed at how compact and round Toriyama draws his cars, they look extra cute. The background was painted first which was done very roughly but I wanted the focus on Bulma and Goku so that’s fine.

About 1 or 2 years ago I wanted to make a painting of a Testarossa at night, when I didn’t quite get color theory and how it interacts with each other. So of course that didn’t go very well. But to my surprise, only using the manga panel for reference I managed to paint a good rendition of a car in a night scene with lighting effects and all. Maybe I should give that Testarossa piece another try at some point.

The Renault was apparently meant to be a rally car before it was released as a consumer car so I wanted Bulma to dress like she is travelling across Mexico. I really liked her outfit from chapter 5 (when they first met Oolong). Looking at more panels, there are a couple of details that I could have added but since she is kind of far away it should be fine. As for Goku, I had to think for a while about what he would wear, and I decided to give him a jacket reminicent of Jackie Chan’s jacket from Police Story 4. Looking at Jackies jacket they aren’t really that similar except in the color but I still think it looks good on Goku. As for what Goku is eating, I had him eating some Churros and buñuelos.

Happy New Year!

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Momoko Tsugunaga Caligraphy brush test

Since I had some time yesterday, I decided to try out my new calligraphy brush. The model that will be the first to try it out is Momochi, using a photo from her last photobook as reference. I’m surprised at how accurate the brush the brush can be. I really enjoyed the experience. For this painting I decided to do it freehand which can be pretty dicey but it does speed up the process by quite a lot. And sure enough it did, but I did do one mistake. I put the mouth and nose too low so I made the decision to alter that using Photoshop.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Momochi Hiding

Today I decided to paint using the Corel Painter real watercolors again. This time I decided to use different brush presets and they definitely act differently. But I guess that is to be expected. Looking at the end result, they give off that watercolor and Copic look. I used the inktober day 26 line art of Momochi’s last photobook. I wanted to emulate the coloring style of classic manga.

I really want to draw more of Momochi. Luckily the Country Girls dvd magazine has plenty of references of her interacting with the snow. And I really want to paint her in the red outfit from her last photobook. But before that, I want to make a New Year’s piece, I already have an idea so it’s just a matter of doing it.

Hope you guys had a great weekend.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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