Finally, we are in the tail end of the summer, there’s only three more days before we finally enter the fall season! Heck yeah! I like this outfit that Momochi used in her “Off Momochi in Okinawa” blu ray. I think it really fits the lowering temps. I made two versions, a more realistic version and an anime version where I simplified certain aspects of the face and enlarging the eyes. Using outlines helps make people pop out, but I wanted to see if I could make it look good without them.
I just got Corel Painter 2023 and this is my first painting using the updated program. I’ve gotta say, it feels a lot smoother and my favorite brush (Sergeant brush) now has a version that has blending abilities. And I’m not even using the full capabilities of it. It seems like I can also make my own brushes so hopefully I can play around with that at some point.
To commemorate and try out this new version I tried out painting this night fireside scene from Momochi’s “Hatachi Momochi” making of DVD. I really like the colors and expressions that Momochi did during this photoshoot scene and wanted to try and paint it. But I wasn’t too confident a while back so I didn’t do it till now. There’s more scenes in this location that I want to give a try at some point. While Painting I wanted to also paint different paint expressions which led me to the idea of making a simple animation, having moving waves and a flickering fire along with Momochi’s changing expressions. I really enjoyed working on this piece.
It took almost a year, but Momochi’s Ai no Dangan drawing has been painted. I wasn’t planning on making a background but as I was working I wanted to play around with some filters and learned I could recreate a screen panel so I played around with two versions of it. At some point though I might do something else with the background.
I made the love bullet first but felt it was a bit lonely. I then played around with an aura around it which I feel fits. It also reminds me of the Spirit Gun from YuYu Hakusho.
Momochi is the first painting on my new clean install. I started with the sergeant brush which was a bit rough (looking). When I painted Momochi it became obvious that it definitely didn’t fit well together. So I used the tapered oil to soften the edges and blend things together a bit. This also helped give the feeling of distance. Momochi’s outfit was a bit tough at the beginning since I had to come up with different shades of white for each piece of clothing. Then there are slight shades of blue and greens that interact with the reflections and shadows from the snow. I left the face and hair for the end. With the surrounding colors finally figured out, working for these last colors was much more straight forward.
In computer news. So far so good, while painting I encountered no problems what so ever. So I should be able to just paint without any problems from now on.
The day almost passed but I somehow made it. Happy Birthday Momochi! I really hope you’re doing great. Although I know you followed your dream, I still selfishly wish you were active. I’m so glad you were really active back in the day because luckily you appeared in a lot of media.
It’s no secret that I love drawing Momochi. Drawing her has been a great source of inspiration in my art journey. Here’s to more in the coming years.
The outfit is from her photobook, the references I used were from the Digital Hello Project Photobooks vol. 98. I liked her pose and smile from different photos, so I used them to create this drawing (along with others that showcase more of the outfit). This is still a work in progress. I’m probably going to paint it digitally (now that I can finally do it).
After finishing the last Buono painting, my computer decided to blue screen uncontrollably. I encountered some of that while painting but the computer was unusable after I finished luckily. It took me four clean installs until I finally managed to fix it this morning. Good thing I have all my data in separate drives just for these occasions. Seems like my scratch disk was the one causing the problem (first time I have ever seen that happen). As soon as I replaced it, the problems ceased. Now everything is working correctly.
Every once in a while I check out the Goodwill auctions and was surprised when I found a Surface Pro 5 being sold. From the pictures shown it seemed to be in pristine condition and had the keyboard cover included. So I decided to take a chance and bid on it. And to my surprise I won. It took a while to get to me which sucked but in the mean time I ordered the accesories that were missing (these being the charger and the surface pen). Luckily I managed to find a genuine used charger and the pen was on sale for that week I was searching for it. When I finally received it I was surprised that it came with the original packaging. The actual surface pro was a bit dirty but looked almost new after I cleaned it. It has me thinking just who bought it and why they decided to donate it. I got the i5 with 8gb or ram which worried me since Corel Painter works better with stronger specs.
You know it’s funny, I was a bit stressed since I had to remind the Goodwill to send it. Which made the wait time longer than it should have been. But by the time it arrived, it was pretty much already October… meaning Inktober. It wasn’t till just the end of last week that I had a chance to finally test it out.
And the first model to be painted using my new Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is Momoko Tsugunaga. This time I used some screenshots I took from her last Photobook where she was inside an ice cream parlor. There were many amazing scenes to choose from, but I decided on this when where Momochi was looking out the window pensively as she was reflected off a picture frame. I painted the background first, then to Momochi and finished with Momochi’s reflection. I think she came out super cute.
So, how did the Surface Pro handle Corel Painter? To my surprise it was quite smooth. Although some things were a bit slow to react (such as making successive brush strokes or changing the brush size using the bracket keys), it wasn’t really by that much. All in all, as long as I have it in high performance during painting sessions it works without any problems. I’m actually quite amazed. Now, I haven’t really been keeping track but painting nonstop with High performance enabled gave the battery about 3-4 hours of life before I had to recharge it. Recharging is also quite amazing, it takes about 30-45 minutes to fully charge it. After a full days worth of painting the Surface Pro did get warm but it wasn’t uncomfortably hot at all which again was also very surprising considering just how thin it is. I already made a second painting so this quick first impressions is taking into account both experiences. What’s great is that it works as a tablet with the power of a computer at all other times. I was worried that I may have had to upgrade to a new stronger version but this works amazingly well.
has been waiting for about a month now to be uploaded. Actually looking at the date, it seems I painted this back in September 6… I had something planned to accompany this piece but I could always add that later.
I wanted a late 80s/ early 90s look. I wanted to emphasize the speed so I manipulated the tilt of the median and buildings to give that effect. Looking at it now, adding some wind lines in the foreground will sell that effect even more. I’ll probably add that to the accompaniment I mentioned above.
I just remembered that it took me a good while to find the model of the motorcycle (it was specially hard since I don’t really know much about them). For those interested in knowing the motorcycle used in the Ai no Dangan MV, it was a Honda VFR 1200F.
This painting is somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand, it is the first painting done with my new drawing tablet but that is because my old Xp pen was no longer working properly after the latest Windows update. (I’ll probably talk about it more later at some point). I recently got a third job so time for painting has decreased by a good bit so I will probably be posting less than before. Maybe that’s a good thing though, it will give me some time to step away from a painting and look at them with fresh eyes.
Although I have only had my new tablet for a couple of days, I am enjoying it. The new monitor setup is a lot more comfortable as well. Man, it feels great being able to use Corel Painter again. I’m still a bit rusty with the oil brushes so this whole painting was mostly done using the sergeant brush. The model that will be the first painting is Momochi. I got the reference from a screenshot that I took from the making of “Hatachi Momochi”. Video Photobooks are great because I can get more references. Man, I’m glad I live in this amazing era. Thank you Momochi for making so many video appearances!
I was wondering why my artwork was looking a bit blocky when I was resizing it to a smaller size so that I could post it online and just now remembered that I didn’t change my settings that I used for creating pixel art. Changing the resample option to automatic and that did the trick. I think I have about one or two weeks worth of artwork that have been resized using the wrong settings… What’s funny is that I already had a resized version up and ready to post, but I’m glad I forgot.
The line art for this painting is quite old now. Its from way back in June. I remember trying to paint it not long after drawing it but didn’t like what I was coming out with. I decided to go with a Copic/watercolor like style. Using Toko Suzuki’s brush is great since it has both texture and opacity control. I really like the amount of detail and control I can get with it. There’s many ways to paint this Momoko drawing but I have couple others that I can try that out with.
This is a painting of Momochi that I have been working on whenever I had some free time during the weekend. This time I used a couple of oil brushes from my collection. I will probably be making another version where I make it a bit more anime like. But first I wanted to go for a more realistic feel. The reference I used was a screenshot from “Off Momochi in Okinawa”. I think this will give me more options in terms of what I can study and paint as well as look closer at poses with movement. I’ve been wanting to also do some animations so this will really help.
Momochi looks freakin adorable as usual.
I have a couple of momochi ink drawings that I haven’t painted yet, I’ll have to think what coloring style I will use for them.
For today’s drawing, I have Momochi in her “Ai no Dangan” outfit riding a motorcycle. There are a lot of options and possibilities when it comes to adding a background. Maybe I should try out different styles when I end up painting it.
An ink drawing of Momochi in a biker suit from the music video “Ai no Dangan”. This mv gives me some Bubblegum Crisis vibes which might me a good idea at some point.
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