I wanted to do a really simple painting of Momoko today. Keep warm and safe out there.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Momochi Pixel Art
For the first painting of February I will upload some pixel art of Momochi. The one with the yellow sweater is from her photobook “Momo16 Momoiro”. It was painted using Pro Motion Ng.
And the other one with the crown is from a promotional photo for the single “Cha Cha Sing”. This one was painted using Photoshop. Photoshop had some advantages but despite painting with the smallest brush size, Photoshop couldn’t pain only one square so it tended to add blend it’s colors onto the surrounding squares. It looked cool when the size was 36×36 pixels wide, but when I enlarged it those colors melded together and created a mess. Luckily I could fix this by choosing the resizing option that chooses the closest color so that the pixels remain intact. This did have the repercussion of messing up certain areas so I had to paint over it again using the wand and square selection tool to fix any areas that had to be retouched. Sadly I save over the original pixel art which I could have enlarged and screengrabbed but that’s just the way things turned out. One other thing that Photoshop has over using Pro Motion is that I can use any colors I want, although I’m sure people like pixel art since people use the limitations of the colors to create cool effects and interesting ways of dealing with said limitations. Personally I like both.
Hopefully I can do some more pixel art work later on.
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
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
Momoko Tsugunaga twin tails
This time I wanted to try out different styles. First, now that I had a stronger pc I wanted to try out the watercolor brush that Corel Painter has. Before in my old system, the program would take a long time to process one brushstroke. And this computer just did it like it was nothing. I then moved over to the real watercolors brush and I only had to wait probably about 1/2 a second for my computer to process the realistic watercolor painting. I do have to practice with them a bit more, but I’m amazed at how realistic the way the paints interact with each other and how I can layer the paint, glaze and pretty much anything that can be done with real watercolors. But with the advantage that digital painting has. I painted rather quickly and that shows, but I’m sure it can be polished to a high degree.
For the second painting I tried the oily bristle brush so that I could compare. It looks good, but I should probably spend more time to blend or make the transitions between colors a bit more cleanly.
For the third painting process I went for a more pop manga style. I’ve been following a couple of artists these days, but I was specifically looking at the art of
__tree_13 : https://www.instagram.com/p/CH0WQnCnsYn/
The artist does a great job of bringing back that 80s style and I really wanted to have a go at it. For this one I used a combination of Photoshop and Clip Studio for the screen tone. I’m really glad that I can open a .psd file with Clip Studio and Painter.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Fancy Momochi
This is a digital painting using the line art from day 7 of Inktober 2020. The theme was fancy that day. When I started painting I just had the idea of keeping it flat and simple. I focused on Momoko first then I spent a good bit of time on the chair. I just started adding colors to see what would come out and when I was done I got the urge to add some stitching to the seat cushions. Getting the right colors was a bit easier when I used the hue ability of Photoshop. When I got the shape and colors at a state I was happy with I added some texture to give that stitching look. I tried a couple of techniques but I feel that making some skipping hatching worked. Keeping it uniform and in the same orientation keeps it looking clean. The background it self I wasn’t too sure about. I then just started adding background elements to make it look like a tea house. The hue used to be more yellowish, but when I was playing with the hues, I arrived at this whiter background. It’s been a while since I last painted so I was a bit worried, but I noticed that I was able to paint with a lot more calmness and ease. Soon I should be able to clear up some more time to use for art. I can’t wait to try more things out.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Inktober 2020 21 Sleep Buono!
Last year for day 24 of inktober I had given this drawing a try, although I had modified it a bit. Since the prompt for today was sleep, I decided to try once again. Since it is a close up I was able to add a bit more detail to the drawing. Despite having a blueray with the Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! PV the scene where they are napping is a bit blurry due to some effects they used. I had stitch different parts together to get the scene together. Buono! is so nostalgic…
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Inktober 2020 07 Fancy Momochi
Today was a rough one… But I still managed to get some time together so that I could make a drawing today. Today’s theme is fancy. I was watching a segment of a variety show where Momoko was dressed by someone else. And in this one she had a black blouse with a slit in the back and a skirt. When I saw her in that I knew I wanted to do a piece in some way. And keeping with the theme I felt I should have her in a fancy tea house with her iconic pinky out. I also was looking at antique chairs and found this really cool one that only showed the front but I figured I could just make up how it would look in the back. I really like the way it came out. But due to the limited time today I decided to just leave it at the line art stage. Once I have more time I will go back and figure out what direction to finish it.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Momoko in the river Study
I had finished the first draft of this painting a couple of days before but wasn’t truly satisfied so I gave it some days and had a go at it again today. I think it looks better than the first version. This is a study of one of her photos from her Momochi Zukan Photobook.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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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