"A Hopeless Dream Chaser"
I’m finally back. It took a while to get some other duties done, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t working on the next artwork. I just couldn’t put any time to come over here and write a bit of an update. But as promised here is another update.
About a week ago I showed you guys an unfinished artwork, well here it is. It will be going into the gallery so that it can be purchased.
Materials (used only for the restoration) – Copics: C1, C3, C5, C7, W1, W3, W5, W7, BV00, BV08, V09, V15, V17, E00, E29, E31, E33, E37, E49, R27, YR65, Y26, Y28, R00, R27, R29, R39, RV11, Y11, Y15, Y17, Y21, Y26, Y28, YR04, YG03, G24, 100, 0
Sakura Gellyroll – White
I got a bit busy so I wasn’t able to add any updates of this drawing up before today, sorry about that. It is finally going live! But before that I would like to give some back story to this drawing. This drawing was first done about a year ago, I think… sadly for some reason I didn’t put the date in the back. In any case, this is the first drawing to go through a new project that I am working on. Thinking about it, it doesn’t have a name yet does it (the project I mean)? After thinking about it, I will name it “The Restoration Project”. I will be restoring a lot of my old drawings since I just didn’t have the abilities to draw out the full potential of my art at the time. This will only be done on the drawings that actually have a potential of course, this is so I can limit the amount so that I can keep doing some new material.
Now, as for the drawing it self. I have been giving hints of me writing my own story. What I have not said yet is the name of the story. So this will be the first time I will be making this public. The name of the story will be named “Between Light and Darkness”. As of now, I plan on writing this story in three parts. But I do have ideas of what can come after. What does this have to do with this drawing? Well this is a scene inspired by my story using two of the characters that will be in it. The girl is named Ame Makenshi and the boy is named Obscurus Nube. I want to make the story a bit original, but like most stories this has to do with a guy who has feelings for a girl. This scene is of them in a Halloween party. Ame is getting a picture taken and Obscurus is caught in the background staring at her. I’m sure this has happened to most people at some point right? So what do you guys think? Does the drawing look better?
I will be updating the website pretty soon, sorry I had to take care of some things on my end before I could come back to finish the construction of the website. I will be adding some more artwork to the “gallery” and updating the “prices“. So I hope you guys look forward to that.
Anyway I want to do something a bit different. I have a lot of old artwork that is actually pretty good, but I need to color it in better and polish it over all. So I will be doing that with a couple of drawings. We will start with the one below. Since it is October I felt it fitting for the season (more on the drawing later).
Hope you guys look forward to it.
-XERO
As promised, here is the next update to the current artwork that I am working on right now. This is only the base with some shadows added. This was done with both water colors and Copic markers. Now I am in the final stages. What I will do now is add some more colors with my color pencils. And that will be my final step, so next time it should be the final piece.
Time spent: hours 8 minutes 03
Materials used: Sakura 0.7 mechanical pencil, Faber Castell Perfection 7056 pencil eraser, eraser,
Sakura Pigma Micron set Black,
Uniball Sigmo White, Black
Sakura Moonlight gellyroll: Yellow, Red pink, Orange
Copic Markers: Y11, Y15, Y17, Y21, Y26, Y28, YR04, YR09, YR68, R08, R27, R29, C1, C3, C5, C7, W1, W3, W5, W7, G21, G28, BG18, V01, V15, V17, 0, E00, 100
So we are now on the third Sailor senshi, two more to go. From what I have seen so far, Rei Hino is definitely my favorite one. What is interesting is that they changed her personality a lot on the original anime from the one in the manga which I find a bit weird. But from what I have seen so far, this one seems to be more like the manga Rei which is more to my liking. Here powers are cooler too, specially since she already had spiritual powers to begin with.
Now for the drawing. I wanted to change things a bit more for this one. I wanted Rei to be a bit more like a Yamato Nadeshiko. So I made sure to not add much indication of eyelashes. And also change the shape of the eyes a bit. And truthfully, it worked out. She came out even better than I expected. One thing that I did sort of messed up are her eyes. I made them purple, but I was reading that they turned red when she was in her senshi form. But oh well. I really like her purple eyes. They blend really well with her long dark hair.
What do you guys think?
-XERO
Time spent: 8 hours 59 minutes
Materials used: Sakura 0.7 mechanical pencil, Faber Castell Perfection 7056 pencil eraser, eraser,
Sakura Pigma Micron set Black,
Sakura gellyroll White,
Sakura Moonlight gellyroll: Light green, Dark purple, Blue, Yellow
Reeves Water Colours 18 set: Viridian hue, Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine,
Copic Markers: 0, E00, C1 C3, C5, C7, W1, W3, W5, W7, YR00, Y11, Y17, Y28, V01, G21, G24, G28, BG10, BG78, B0000, B01, B05, B21, B24, B26, B28, B32, B34, B39, B45, B69, B97
Sharpie Oil Based PAINT White Fine Point
And so we continue with the Sailor Senshi series. This time it is the second member to be revealed in the series Sailor Mercury, real name Ami Mizuno. So far, I like her more than Sailor Moon. Though she hasn’t really made a strong impression on me either. On another note, I still don’t quite understand what Sailor Moon’s attacks are based on, most likely they are just random attacks that Naoko Takeuchi thought were cool. But for all other members, it seems like they have an elemental affinity tied to them. For Ami Mizuno it is water, so since the start I wanted to incorporate that. In the end I was thinking about it being either ripples or waves. I never really made up my mind before starting the drawing, but in the end I just combined them together. And surprisingly, it worked quite well together.
In any case, I hope you guys enjoy and learn from this video.
-XERO
Time spent: 7 hours 56 minutes
Materials used: Sakura 0.7 mechanical pencil, Faber Castell Perfection 7056 pencil eraser, eraser,
Sakura Pigma Micron set Sepia +Sakura Pigma Micron set Black, Sakura gellyroll White, Sakura Moonlight gellyroll: Yellow, light pink, Dark Pink,
Reeves Water Colours 18 set: Lemon Yellow, Medium Yellow, Ivory Black, Phthalo Blue, Violet, Ultramarine,
Copic Markers: R08, R27, R29, Y11, Y17, Y21, Y28, B01, B05, B34, B45, B97, C1, C3, W1, W2, V01, G21, G24, G28.
There was no video last week because I bought a new scanner, but it would not arrive till after a couple of days later after I usually upload a video. So I decided to hold it back and wait for the scanner to arrive. It is a large scanner that allows me to scan areas up to A3 (which is a scanner I have been looking for for quite some time). Now I can get a good quality copy of my artwork here at home.
In any case, for this weeks drawing, we will be doing Sailor Moon. I heard the new series would be broadcasted so I decided to give it a chance and see what it was about. I know I saw some episodes when I was younger but I only saw a few and don’t really remember much. So I said, what the heck, lets give it a chance. After all, I kept hearing good things from both females and males about it. My overall impressions at this point? Personally the old animation looks more appealing to me, but it definitely doesn’t look bad at all. I hear this series is following the manga better so I will see this through to the end to see how good it is. I gotta say, Usagi is rather dumb… But I guess that’s a common feature among Shoujo heroines (as well as Shonen heroes of course). We’ll see how this goes.
-XERO
Time spent: 9h22m
Materials used: Mechanical pencil, ruler, eraser, Faber Castell eraser pencil
Colored Pencil: water color PrismaColor – peacock blue, ultramarine blue, french grey 20%, true blue, violet, black, crimsom red, lilac, white, blush pink
PrismaColor – ginger root, peach, beige, cream, sand, light peach, 20% french grey, lilac, parma violet, dark purple, mulberry, carmine red, pink, process red, yellowed orange, crimson lake, 50% warm grey, 70% cool grey, 70% warm grey, 50% gold Grey, White, Black
Crayola – pale rose, violet, brown, taupe, lemon yellow, jade green, harvest gold, magenta
Rose Art – violet, orchid
Verithin – dahlia purple
Ultra Color – purple
We have made it to the second video, this time the objective is Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail. A good series (that relies on way too much fan service…). For this drawing I thought I would only use color pencils and nothing else. I figured I would try to show different techniques that can be implemented with different tools. The most common one that people can easily get their hands on are color pencils. They are rather versatile and can leave some really good effects, but only if used right. I’m mainly a pencil type of artist so I’m a bit shaky when it comes to coloring. But I have been practicing and coming up with new methods ever since I decided to go pro. I’ve actually been starting to understand how to fully utilize the full potential that color pencils possess. And that is what this video will be about.
Hope you guys enjoy the new format, and learn much more this way. Till next time.
-XERO
description later
I will add the description later.
So this weeks artwork will be featuring Kuroko Tetsuya from the Kuroko no Baske (“the basketball Kuroko plays”), a series that is much like Captain Tsubasa (except instead of Football, they play basketball). This means that there will be young school players that have extraordinary techniques that makes one think of Dragon Ball (minus the fighting). It is an amazing series and has the type of characters I like as a protagonist (the main one anyway), a weak player in all areas except passing. This means that he has a lot to improve throughout the series. And sure enough, the series delivers. Despite his weaknesses, Kuroko uses his strengths to make his lack of abilities more than make up for it. I don’t want to delve too much into it, so if you have not seen it, make sure to do so as soon as you can.
I have decided to finally start working with my collection of Copic markers I bought a couple of years ago. The smoothness that I can achieve from them always leaves me amazed to no end (though I still need to work on not using too much ink on my artwork). I started with a simpler design, but eventually decided to add a dark background to it later (backgrounds are still my weakness). Looking at them side by side, I think the simpler “light” design is still my favorite. But the “dark” design doesn’t look bad either. What do you guys think?
Here is the drawing for this week, Unit 01 from Neon Genesis Evangelion. I was pretty much done with it yesterday, but there was something that kept bothering me about my drawings. The fact that they look so unrefined. I knew why that was of course. I did not blend the colors anymore. This happened because I decided to practice doing this so that I could increase my abilities without the need to blend them, that way once I decided to go back and put some good effort into my work I would be able to produce some amazing stuff. Sadly I got so used to doing this that I had almost forgotten the blending techniques I had developed. And because of it I have to start all over again. I gave it a try for this drawing which came out pretty well (though it looks unfinished without a background, I’ll have to do something about that from now on). Now that I have remembered a couple of my old techniques and about blending colors, I will try to bring out some better quality work from here on out.
Hope you look forward to it.
-XERO
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