Category: Update

I’m back, some updates (liked by Miyabi) and a quick drawing of Goku celebrating

I think I mentioned this before but I have been quite busy lately with my other job and building my desk PC which took me 4 weeks to complete. Had I had a bit more time to work on it I think I could have completed it in two weeks but such is life. Now I have more workspace since I added about 6 inches on the contour of the desk (minus the front side) so that I could clamp my three monitors thus giving me all of my original (about) 4 x 3 feet to use with all of my supplies that I would use as I work. I actually just made the finishing touches yesterday so I wasn’t really even able to use the desk till today. So far I’m really happy with the way it is all set up and because I made the outside contours on the sides so that I could clamp down my monitors I can now fully see all of the screen on both sides as I work on my XP-Pen which I of course left on the center. I’ll show some pics of it and the setup at some other time.

Way back in, whoa, May 28th (it’s been that long after all huh) I uploaded my painting celebrating Buono! To my surprise on June 8th I actually got a like from Natsuyaki Miyabi! Man it feels nice to know that the person you decided to make a painting of has seen your work. But to also get their approval of it is quite nice. I’m really glad my feelings of appreciation for her work has reached her.

Here is the painting just in case you missed it. And here is a link to the original post.

While I was getting some supplies for my desk PC I stopped by a nearby dollar store and came across some small vials with cork caps. I got a set of two of the 6 packs so that I could store some pre mixed inks and watercolors that I could use when working with linework/outlines. For today I made a set of ink that got lighter and lighter for when I want to use different levels of black to gray inks. I have my diluted ink that is still quite dark in my original container and a set of 5 vials containing the newly created ink. I also made a reference sheet to show me the intesity of the ink within each vial and a date of when they were created just in case one of them runs out and I have to create a new batch which of course might not be the same as the previous one. Since it was running a bit late when I was completely done getting my worspace ready I decided to make a quick drawing. Since it was all about testing the desk I of course decided to go traditional (plus I also got to try out my inks, although I only used my base ink for this drawing). I’ll try to see if I could make a quick drawing every weekday for the rest of the summer on top of whatever new paintings I decide to work on. I already have an idea of the first piece I will be working on (hopefully starting tomorrow).

Here is that Goku drawing I did. Maybe I should have made some lines to express movement but overall I’m quite pleased with the results (was a bit scared that I wouldn’t be able to draw as I liked since I hadn’t done it in about 4 weeks).

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Momochi in the beach

Man, this one is already about a year old now. I was planning on releasing it at some point but it never happened and ultimately I decided to release it when it got hot out again. And seeing as the weather has been getting hot lately (plus I haven’t uploaded in a while) I figure now would be a good time to upload it. The painting of Momoko is the same that was done a year ago but wasn’t pleased with the background so I tried out my new pc upgrades with this piece by painting a new beach background. There is no more stuttering or slowing down anymore (although the temps of the CPU are a bit worrisome). I tried out some of the other brushes that Corel Painter offers and saw no problems at all. Last time I tried it with my old components my pc couldn’t keep up. Although it could handle my favorite oil brush it tended to close up (Corel) on me from time to time. The last time when I was painting the Buono piece I lost half an hour’s worth of work which really sucked. I was going to wait on upgrading for a bit longer but after that happened I decided to pull the trigger. And I’m very happy I did.

I really like Momochii’s Yurushite Nyan pose so I went with that when I first drew her. My thought process at the time was to try out 80s/90s style painting which can look extremely beautiful if done right. But as mentioned when I was looking at the old background it just wasn’t up to par so I made a new one that would fit Momoko.

I’m planning on making more paintings throughout the summer ( I actually have had some ideas floating around for a while now). But work and my decision to make a desk computer will be keeping me busy for a bit longer. Hopefully the extra space in the desk will help cool down my cpu and gpu if not I’m going to have to invest in a new cooler…

It has also been a while since I’ve done some traditional watercolor paintings so I hope to get back into that as well.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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BUONO! Memorial 2020

Let’s start off by saying that I really love Buono! There was just something magical about this formation. Such a shame I will never get to see them live in concert. I’m really jelly of those who got to experience it. Thankfully the concerts are now being released on Youtube for more people to experience them. This premiere that happened last week was the closest I could get to experiencing one of their concerts live. A shame I couldn’t enjoy it all the way through since it started at 3 am in the morning where I live and I had to get ready for work. I couldn’t even get to enjoy Airi’s live video about Buono!… On the bright side this was done on Youtube so I can at least rest easy knowing that it won’t disappear and I can watch it as many times as I want. Man I really wanted to have this painting done on time last week. I actually own the concert but I’m glad it’s on Youtube so that more people can get to watch it and interact amongst fans.

I was working on this since the beginning of last week in the hopes that I would be able to finish it in time for Youtube’s premiere of the Buono! Pienezza! concert. But my other job has been extremely busy so I only managed to get the background and the main outlines and colors of Momochi, Miyabi and Airi. I don’t know if it was because I was tired from overworking or if I just had no idea of how to continue with the painting process but I got stuck and couldn’t continue working on it when I had some free hours to work on it. I finally managed to get some time to work on it again on Tuesday and started to use a new technique (for me) using Photoshop. Which basically just consists of putting in the base colors on one layer, adding a multiply layer for the outlines and another multiply layer for the shadows on them. It took me a while to come up with a system so that I could work faster and more efficiently (although it took me a whole two days to really know what I was doing).

Thank you for the music and fun all these years. It really warms my heart to know that they are still remembered and loved.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Rei Sailor Moon redraw

My brother told me about this redraw challenge for Sailor Moon. It seems that people are mainly focusing on on a certain screenshot. But I wanted to change it up a bit, which others have done as well. I would say that Rei is my favourite of the sailor members so I wanted to paint her. I really like the aesthetic of her in the pink overalls so I chose that scene. Background wasn’t too much of a problem but I painting Rei did take a good amount of time. Though since I wasn’t using other references as I painted her had me processing every step.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Sayu pixel art test 1

I’ve been wanting to do some pixel art for a couple of months now… I recently got reminded again of ThorHighHeels video about the PC98 art style. I have an idea for a piece that I will be working on soon. For the first test I made a new Sayu piece using a photo from her instagram. It seems like there is a way to do pixel art using Photoshop but I would have to change quite a number of the settings so looked for other alternatives. Eventually I came upon Pro Motion which luckily has a free version. It seems that if I were to get a full version I would gain the ability to animate my art, but that will have to wait. After finishing this piece which surprisingly didn’t take too much time I exported the picture as a PNG. The resolution was of course tiny (64 pixels by 64 pixels). I figured I could just enlarge the piece with Photoshop. It worked quite well.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Elsa Granhiert エルザ・グランヒルテ

This drawing was originally done for inktober 2019 on day 4. My first main goal was to make an anime painting with hard color changes. When I was done I noticed that it didn’t fit in at all with the texture background I had started. They didn’t fit together at all. So I was a bit disappointed. It looked amazing with a completely white background though. The colors were really vibrant and had really light and dark tones so I wondered what type of background would fit. After I was done painting Elsa in I thought about it for a while and decided to paint the background with Corel. I had absolutely no plan when painting but after just choosing a base color that would fit with Elsa’s color scheme I just started adding color till I eventually ended up with her sitting on a her comfy seat surrounded by some curtains (I believe that’s what they would be called). But Elsa still did not fully fit in with the background. It didn’t look back bad but the lights weren’t interacting with her at all. So I then put a gradient on her to darken the bottom half of her body and putting the layer on multiply.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Little Witch Risako

This was first drawn from inktober 2019 day 3. This time I wanted to do a more simplistic coloring style more in the style of anime. If one uses the right colors it can really pop and look amazing. I really like the way it came out.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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K’ Copic

For todays’s piece I decided to color K’ with Copics, but this time with a background. I really wanted to make a piece with the raining stage in King of Fighters 99. As I was working on it I decided to have some empty spaces so that the piece would look a bit more interesting. The drawing of K’ was originally done for Inktober 2018 day 10. But I didn’t use the same piece. I transferred the original drawing to a new watercolor paper by using my lightbox. As for the background I wanted to give just painting it a try without any lineart. It worked alright but I think I would be able to have a better color selection using watercolors. Copics are cool but they are really limited by the colors one owns and the ink that one has.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Suiryu Cat’s Claw Copic

I wanted to do another copic piece, but this time I wanted a more manga styled one with a more simplistic coloring scheme. I’ve been drawing a lot of girls lately so I wanted to draw a guy this time. For today’s subject I drew Suiryu again. I just barely had a chance to see the second season of One Punch Man. The animation is not bad, but it truly has degraded compared to the first season. I also noticed that they rushed some scenes quite a bit, but it’s not too bad (specially compared to what they did to To Aru Majutsu no Index III). It was really fun seeing Suiryu get animated, I just hoped to see more of him.

As for this piece, I wanted to have Suiryu actually training after the tournament incident but I still wanted a bit of humor. So for this drawing I used the pose of the Cat’s Claw from the Jackie Chan movie Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. It’s a powerful but hilarious style. You can see it here.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Sayumi Michishige Copic

Continuing on with traditional work, I next moved on to using Copics. It’s been a couple of months since I last used them. I usually have trouble using darker colors because I’m afraid I will mess up in a way that I can’t reverse but this time I decided to push it woth some darker colors in the skin right from the start. Since I have been working with colors more I know how they will react once I add darker values such as with the hair so I felt a bit more at ease once I started working. I’m still not as fast as I would like to be though. This took me a couple of hours but I feel if I can probably do this in a bout an hour once I have a bit more experience. Looking at the reference photo and my version I could have added a bit more of the red tones on her skin but the overall idea was still portrayed which is good. The lips reacted with the ink since I might have overworked it a bit too much so I wasn’t able to portray a more natural lip color, I’ll have to be more careful next time.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Airi Suzuki Color pencil

The plan was to try out the other color pencil set I had but the colors weren’t right for the drawing I decided to do. But my Prismacolor set did have the right colors so I decided to use those instead. I was surprised at how amazing they were. I was having a lot of problems with them back in the day I remember, but I guess that was just my inexperience. Having said that, I’m nowhere near as good as the artists that specialize in color pencils. I was recently looking at the artwork of michaelfreemanpastelartist. He specializes in using pastel pencils it seems, and his art is photo realistic. It’s really amazing. I guess if I practice for a bit I should be able to improve a great deal my self, but my plan is to focus more on watercolors when it comes to traditional art. Instead I will use my color pencils as support. This has been the plan for a good bit, but I’ve never really used them together before. Maybe I’ll make that my next project.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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Momoko Tsugunaga Pastel pencil

It’s actually been a couple of years since I last used color pencils. I actually had bought two different types of color pencil sets before I guess I decided to move over to Copics. Now understanding colors more, but being out of practice with color pencils I was curious to see if I could even use them.

So for this drawing I used the Faber-Castell Pastel pencils >>Pitt<<. They are quite amazing, they apply to the paper quite easily and spread out quite evenly. But they also smeared quite easily and were quite chalky. Plus they didn’t really like getting layered. But if I planned things out correctly they worked out quite well. I like them, but they smear far too easily.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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