There was a ranking done by current idols regarding their all time favorite songs. I was sad that there was no Berryz Koubou and ℃-ute songs that made it, but we got the ultimate convergence of both groups up to second place. Buono! Seeing that made me so happy and tear up again. They have so many good and fun songs but of course they went for Hatsukoi Cider.
Last time I uploaded the rough draft, this time it’s the cleaned line art. I decided to finish it all using Clip Studio Paint. Next time I’ll upload the background.
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.
For Berryz Koubou’s 18th anniversary. Miyabi, Yurina and Maasa held a live where they celebrated with a cake containing the cover of their debut single “Anata Nashide wa Ikite Yukenai”. When I paint it, I might tweak the cake a bit more so that the cake art can be seen better. Miyabi’s outfit I couldn’t see completely from the photo that Maasa uploaded so I had to guess how it looked like. Sad that I couldn’t see the live. Hopefully they put clips of it in the M-line Youtube channel.
I’ve been wanting to try out this style for a while. I think it works really well with this drawing. I went with an Anime X Cartoon style. I like the more stylized look of this art style. We’ll see how it turns out when I paint it.
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.
I really miss Buono! I’m so glad they have so many recorded media of their activities. What’s great is that there are a lot of new fans appearing. Their legacy continues to grow!
This painting took me longer than I thought it would but I’m finally finished. I went with an 80s anime style. I started with the background and then started painting from left to right. The line art was overlaid digitally then set to multiply. The base colors went in first then I started adding the leopard, polka dots and star designs, etc. I then created a separate layer where I multiplied the shadow layers. Then above all the layers for each member I created a new one for the lighting. To keep with the anime aesthetic I chose the typical anime hair colors so that they popped more. For their eyes, I chose their member colors.
As I was working on this painting I got reminded that Berryz Koubou’s 18th debut anniversary was on March 3rd. Sadly I wasn’t able to do a piece to commemorate it though. I still wan to make one though. I have an idea for one, but maybe I should save that one for their 20th anniversary. Or maybe I should just make that one, we’ll see.
A great intro to Buono! is Hatsukoi Cider. Check it out here (Their official video has over 5 million views!):
Didn’t have the time to finish it today but at least the line art is ready. I was thinking about uploading an inked version but this refined pencil line art will do for now. I saw the prompt for idols and of course I had to draw something for it. There are many options but I decided to go with BUONO! The formation of Momoko, Miyabi and Airi was just magical.
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.