Ranma and Akane skating

I started this painting back on Saturday and worked a bit on it Sunday morning but for some reason felt like I wasn’t making much progress. It started to become a slugfest, so I decided to take the rest of Sunday off and not work on it on Monday. I felt a bit guilty but when I continued working on it today I definitely felt more refreshed and the wall I was fighting before was suddenly non existent. Although the background and the poses were mostly left finished on Sunday, there was still quite a bit of work to do figuring out how I wanted the colors for Ranma and Akane. But once I got the base colors done, the work just flowed after that. It was just a matter of working and tweaking things. I’m trying to render things a bit more so that they don’t look too rough. I’m also gonna play around with the line art digitally. Doing so I can get a my style that I’m currently developing and traditional anime working together. Judging by how things tend to work out, I’ll be adjusting and hopefully refining it as I go along.

Background is a mismatch of different ideas and photos but the ice was from a photo I took a while ago:

The idea for this painting was mainly jus to have Akane skating when I saw this photo of Yū Hayami (I of course used the opportunity to change the K to an A):

But I felt like Akane would look too lonely so I added Ranma. I remembered that he had trouble skating in the first seasons (did he ever learn?) so I wanted to paint him struggling. That’s how I came upon this pose reference (Can’t find info on the model for some reason):

Ranma’s outfit:

I was pretty much done when I suddenly by the end felt it would look even better if I had Ryoga in his boar form jumping off of Ranma. Then I noticed that Akane looked too stiff so I decided to have her hair flutter as if she was in movement.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Inktober 2021 Day 28 inked

When I first starting hearing Akina Nakamori I was watching her music videos and quite vividly remembered a performance where there was a Hannya mask in the background. It took me a while to find the performance which I luckily managed to find. I wonder if I should have done something with the background…

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Naoko Kawai sneakers Line Art

Reference used:

On monday I was in the mood to just draw a couple of pieces with pen and no rough draft. Some were good, and others were a bit off… The original drawing of Naoko was ok, but I decided to clean it up digitally and make a simpler version by using less lines and details and rounding out some areas.

Hasta la proxima,

-Nube

Lady Naoko Kawai Study

I’ve been itching to do another Naoko painting lately. While looking through my references I came upon what looks to be a poster that says “[Seikodo] Lady Naoko” (another poster did not have Seikodo on it) and some more text below tI’ve been itching to do another Naoko painting lately (I still am). While looking through my references I came upon what looks to be a poster that says “[Seikodo] Lady Naoko” (another poster did not have Seikodo on it) and some more text below that which I can’t quite read but I believe a part of it has Naoko’s full name. On the top right of the poster is some kanji that I translated as “girls bloom”. On the side is some small text that’s also hard to read (I think it has this text: “夕女は。悪いて大人になる” although the kanji is quite hard to make out since it’s so blurry)If anyone knows what this poster is for, do let me know. Just searching for Lady Naoko yields no results.

Reference used:

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Akane Jogging

This painting is influenced by the poster of “Maboroshi no mizuumi”, it reminded me of the first episode of Ranma where we were shown how diligent Akane was in her training. Looking at the plot of the movie though, it has a rather sad plot. That was a bummer. I wanted to do an 80s anime style where I try to replicate Ranma 1/2s look.

Poster used: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0226998/mediaviewer/rm112027904/

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Isako Washio Campaign Girl ’85 COLOR

This is the painted version of my drawing of Isako Washio. I can’t quite read the kanji for what the actual campaign she was modeling for in the reference picture I used, if you know what it is do let me know.

reference picture:

I quite liked the tan and shadows that compliment the lighting. I decided to have her in a beach as opposed to being indoors, so of course the lighting changed slightly to a brighter one. It’s been raining where I live quite often these past days so I was tempted to make it rainy in this painting as well. But I should do all types of weather types. Seeing as the temperature is also rising, going to the beach is not that out of place.

Line art can be seen here:

Isako Washio Campaign Girl ’85 line art

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Isako Washio Campaign Girl ’85 line art

I wasn’t paying too much attention but Isako was wearing a bikini underneath, because the reference picture I have is a bit too pixelated I thought it was lace underwear.

Reference picture used of Isako Washio:

Here is the line art:

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Naoko Kawai Jeep

It’s been a while since I last painted with watercolors. Truth be told, I was really afraid to go at it. But after looking at a couple of pictures from one of my favorite artists, it gave me that push to just start painting. The artist I’m talking about (and that I have mentioned before a couple of times) is Little Thunder. If you haven’t seen her work I really suggest you go and check it out. It’s absolutely beautiful and definitely one of my artistic inspirations. I tend to overwork my paintings and not use color theory to my advantage. I still don’t fully comprehend it but I do know when colors look right when used with each other, so I have at least developed my color abilities to that level. Having said that, I still was guided by Little Thunder’s artwork as I painted.

Here’s her instagram: https://www.instagram.com/littlethunder/

I really like Japanese 80s music, and one of my favorite artists during that time is Naoko Kawai. Her voice and music are amazing and brings me joy when I listen to it. On top of that she is super cute. So of course I would do another piece of her. This time I wanted to try something a bit more difficult that had various variables, and well I just plain liked the photo of her in the Jeep. I was surprised I was able to finish the painting so fast. It was three days, (a few hours on Wednesday for the rough draft, Thursday I finished the rough draft and focused on inking, I then got all my courage and actually started painting today Friday). I really love the way watercolors look. It changes my art style quite a bit. I’m planning to do more paintings but October is coming so that means Inktober, plus I need to write three essays… It’s gonna be a rough month. But I’ll give it a shot. I was amazed when I saw Little Thunder finished a drawing/painting in 15 minutes. That’s a good goal to aim for.

Hope you guys like it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Grace Jones

Was looking at my Japanese vintage ads folder and came across one for Grace Jones advertising the New Celica. After that I learned that she was not only a model but also an actor (quickly found out about her role in the Conan movie) and a singer. My favorite song of hers is “I’ve Seen That Face Before”. I’ve never worked with such dark skin tones before so I really wanted to give it a try. There are more blue tones in the reference photo but since I used a red background I changed the tones accordingly. While I was at it I also changed the pose a bit.

80s, CorelPainter2020, darkskin, DARKCLOUDXERO, digitalart, GraceJones, pointingfinger, Pose, redlips, ShortHair, vogue, wink

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

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