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

Suzuki Airi Tirantes 80s Anime D

I had attempted to draw this and paint this for New Years but I didn’t really like the way it came out. So I attempted it again, but since I had already painted the original lineart I had no choice but to go at it digitally. I would say that the painting process isn’t taking that much time, but getting references does. I decided to use the coloring style from the movie Macross: Do you remember love. Aside from coloring it I also wanted to edit some other parts of the drawing it self. The first part was the mouth and lips. I decided to take out the linework of the upper and lower lip. I would form it wit color instead. Of course this and all the other changes were dictated by the references I got from the movie. For the mouth, I also resized it and made it smaller while also repositioning it. The Eyes were moved down a bit and I erased most of the eyelash strands. Eyelashes were also thined and shortened a bit. To my surprise, when I was screen capturing the final reference shots I came across a scene that is almost the same background like the Airi Suzuki picture that I’m using. I quite like the addition of the shadow. I feel like I could’ve added something on the left side of the painting. But this works. One thing I do know is that it looks quite good using a diluted ink linework so that the color influences it when applied.

 

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Ranma thumbs up Don’t give up

Was working on this last week but didn’t get to finish the painting process till just now after work. The line work was done using my Stabilo pens. It’s been a while since I last used them. I wanted to see what kind of effect it would have when I underlaid it digital paint. It’s not a bad look, especially in the skin tones but, I think the blue is a little too well blue. I’m thinking using a grey pen on most parts except on the skin tones would work better. But at least now I know. It’s a shame they don’t really work well with watercolors (they smear and bleed). Well at least they work with copics. It’s a shame really because when it comes to traditional painting/coloring I now prefer to use watercolors. As for the digital painting process I tried to replicate the anime coloring style which I just absolutely love. Will definitely try doing it again. I’ll also do try doing this using my traditional paints.

Things have been getting rather hectic lately. Stay safe out there, and never give up.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

 

Seiko Matsuda FireAlpaca test 01

My brother was telling me about whether I had used FireAlpaca. I actually hadn’t heard about it before. He told me to check it out since it was free and his friend used it so he was wondering what I thought about it.

Just as he said, the program is indeed free. The program it self is lightweight and easy to understand. There are a number of functions that are missing compared to Corel (realistic brushes) and Photoshop (it’s photo editing features) but it also has a number of functions are pretty cool. It has functions to upload directly to Pixiv. One of the things that really surprised me was how fast and responsive it reacts. It opens fast and it paints smoothly. I decided to use their watercolor brush and it reacted pretty closely to the oil brush from Corel Painter which I loved. I was planning to just paint a quick test but it eventually led to actually finishing the painting (I just couldn’t stop once it begin to take form).

Conclusion about the program (as of now), there are some features I miss from Corel and Photoshop but it is a solid program that people should get. Especially if what you are looking for is a free art program. Give it a try.

I’ve been wanting to make a painting using the 80s references I have been archiving for quite a while now. So I used this as an excuse to give it a try. As mentioned above, it was just going to be a quick rough draft to try the program but ended up finishing it. Seiko came out really cute, I really like the the washed out colors used and the way her expression came out.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

80s Tirantes cute girl

I’ve been really into drawing with my g-pen but I have been trying to develop coloring styles as well. And I want to see how I can color my artwork when I use black ink. Does a detailed painting fit it, or do I have to use a simpler color scheme? This piece was drawn and painted a while ago so sorry about now uploading it sooner. Have been quite busy lately and decided to focus my time to drawing and painting.

One of the things I like about Krita is the ability to apply screentone like a paint (meaning I can paint it on with my pen). This is a great tool. So I decided to try out different shading process, without and with screentones.

Here are the different versions:

Here is the line art and inked original drawing:

Reference, after using the Google image search ability it seems the model is Mami Yamase:

This is the drawing process:

The inking and screentone process:

Here is the coloring process:

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

 

Trying out different coloring styles: Lynn Minmey

My brother showed me this cool picture that was drawn and then had sections of the dress cut out so that the artist could use the sky as her dresses color. Since I was already drawing Minmey so that I could practice with my pen on bristol paper. Bristol paper is cool and all but it starts to bubble up and break apart when I use water media on it so I decided to paint it digitally. And since I was already preparing  the drawing for using photographs as the “coloring” base I figure it would be a good enough time to practice different coloring styles and backgrounds.

I was just focusing on drawing and painting so I didn’t keep any records of the process this time.

Minmey drawn with my G-Pen:

Using photos as the back base for Minmey’s shorts, hair and eyes:

And here is Minmey using the anime style painting with a beach background:

Minmey using the anime style painting with her room as the background:

And finally using the colors from the reference picture:

Here are the reference pictures used:

That will be all for now.

Hasta la proxima,

– NUBE

 

 

 

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑