I decided to invest on some new refillable brush pens and pens by Kuretake and Pentel. For the first test I decided to draw Airi with the Kuretake brush and pen. Bit of a shame that I didn’t have enough time today so I was limited on the details I could draw.
It’s about to get even colder where I live so I wanted to paint something to reflect that. Looking at some references I remembered a painting I made back in 2021 that I wanted to eventually get back to and give it another try. So I decided to RE:do my Airi painting of her in a jacket. I also decided to try out a couple of new brushes aside from the sargent brush. I’m glad I did so because some of them fought me less when I was spreading paint and mixing. My plan is to continue practicing until I understand them better. This time around I was also more confident in giving her mitts a try.
I wonder how long it has been waiting to be uploaded? I just had a full day of snowing yesterday so I think it’s appropriate to upload a Wintery painting before we enter Spring. It was weird painting with Krita from Corel Painter. But for a free program it’s awesome. After playing around with the settings though it felt a lot better. But I guess for my painting style I’m just too used to Corel.
I’m so glad Airi has been very successful once she went solo. It’s always great when a new song or acting project comes out. There are so many Airi paintings I hope to make.
For my my first Painting using my XP-Pen Pro 24 I decided to do a study painting of Airi Suzuki in a summer dress and straw hat. I was a bit intimidated because of all the details on the hat and the dress. But once I started I just got in the groove.
I just recently upgraded my drawing monitor from a 16 inch one to a 24 inch one. My plan was to wait for next year but there was a used one for a good price so I decided to take the plunge. I was surprised by how huge it was. I had to change my set up again since I don’t have the space for the old monitor arm I was using with my 16 inch set up. So far I am loving being able to see so much of the canvas as I work and being able to work on more of it as once. Now I have to move the painting less. The only downside is that the pen has this annoying problem when I’m resizing the brush that my previous 16 inch monitor did not have. I guess all that marketing about having a smarter chip in the pen was not all for show. I wonder if they will ever update the pen to this monitor. I will update how it holds up as I use it more.
Here is the Colored version of my Airi Rescue illustration. I’m uploading two versions. The second version has some static added to it to replicate the quality of a magazine print. One things I like in old anime are the glow effects they do with beams, so I wanted to incorporate that in this illustration. Adding some outer glow to the beam and adding some noise to the glow gave it a cool effect.
I want to convert this drawing to an anime frame at some point. You know, like those mid point frames when the anime had to go to commercials.
I actually had a version of this drawing ready to go, but I’m glad I never uploaded it. Since I had a chance to rest on it and reflect on what I could do with it, I ended up adding some new ideas to it which I think look better. Before it was a bit flat but now it now looks like a title page at the beginning of a chapter. The beam saber looked a bit bland too, so I added some outer glow to it and also some grain so that it blended roughly with the background. Clip Studio has some cool stuff to draw manga, but it also lacks in others which is why I like combining it with Photoshop. The only bad thing about that is that the screen tone layers get screwed up and I can’t edit them again. There are ways to just make a quick new layer to edit if necessary, but that’s a real pain if I have to do multiple.
I wanted to download a stars brush to do them quickly but I ended up just painting them by hand. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. I like that rough look to them that the real g pen from Clip Studio gives it. The font it self I ripped from the music video.
Here’s the music video by the way. It’s a really fun one, I love it:
This is a study of Airi Suzuki. I want to do more artwork of her to celebrate her 20th anniversary. For this drawing I want to practice different coloring styles. For the line art, I went for thin lines which I liked how it looked when doing Inktober this year. The inking in the hair is too dark, it doesn’t give the image of it being a lighter brown. Perhaps I should just make lighter hatching. Perhaps at a later date.
Assuming I understood what was being said, Mai Hagiwara just got married on ℃-ute day and for the event after the ceremony all the members sang. How cute is that. It would be so amazing if they released that performance. Congratulations Mai and ℃-ute. Wishing you the best.
It took a while but I finally managed to finish this painting to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Berryz Koubou and ℃-ute first known as the Hello Project Kids. I was wondering what I should draw\paint to celebrate and remembered the I believe Hello Morning episode where they announced the finalists who would be joining Hello Project. The delayed reaction of everyone learning that they were all chosen to stay was funny and cute. There was a good delay before they all reacted to the news. This I believe was a great moment to paint since this is where it all began.
Thank you for this past 20 years. And here’s to celebrating the future ones as well.
I really love her solo music, I’m so glad others agree and her popularity has been increasing.
I’m quite late doing this painting but I have been quite busy lately. I also didn’t want to do a subpar painting either. I used references of her birthday pictures (from her instagram) for this painting. Her photos are always so fun. Surprisingly the balloons were not hard to paint at all. It was Airi that I felt I couldn’t get right.
I found a fansite that had a large collection of Airi’s photos that I had no seen before. One of the albums contained photos of Airi’s collaboration with Pivotdoor. There’s a lot of possible drawing ideas but I was really drawn to Airi flying with a broom like a magical girl. Her photos are always so fun and full of energy. That smile is really infectious.