The videos for How to Draw Manga Redraw Pen and Tone is live

Main video:

Extended version can be seen here:

On April 8th there was a twitter challenge to redraw the character from a “How to draw Manga” book. The book they were talking about was a different one that I didn’t use my self. When I grew up, I used a the version distributed here in North America by Digital Manga Distribution. I know that the whole point of the challenge was to try and redraw that character, which is… well look at him yourself:

But I was thinking more in terms of retrying to draw a cover that I had once tried to draw when I was a kid. I didn’t quite get the contents of the book themselves, I was more interested in the cover art done by Kazuaki Morita.

In the end, I actually ended up finding that drawing I made years ago:

Man, that reversed hand is just…

Here is the current attempt:

The background music/sounds are from old trailers that I tended to hear from anime that I rented from my local library. People from my generation will know exactly what I’m talking about. Luckily, there are people online that are uploading these now classic anime history. Much like how AnimeCollective is doing. Link to each of the songs used and their respective trailers are below.

“Yumemiru Ai Tenshi” by by Ai tenshi densetsu Wedding Peach Trailer from ADV Films:

Media Blasters Trailer from Twin Signal:

“Wake Up” by Chisato:

“Treat or Goblins” by Megumi Hayashibara:

“Soramimi Cake” by Oranges & Lemons:

“Yuzurenai Negai” by Naomi Tamura:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5JcVis3950

“Carnival Babel” Takada Band:

I ended up only watching two of these anime. Blue Seed and Azumanga Daioh. I’m surprised I still haven’t seen Magic Knight Reyearth.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

April 19, 2021 1

How to Draw Manga Redraw Pen and Tone

A bit of a late upload. I was planning on uploading some of the work I had lined up but when I was on twitter I noticed that #HowToDrawMangaRedraw was trending. The one being redrawn is from a book done by Katy Coope. But the one I grew up with was by Ryo Toudo. Looking inside the book, the cover artist is Kazuaki Morita. I really love his style. Man, this cover really brings back memories of when I was first getting into anime and was amazed by the selection of media that our local library carried. I won’t lie, I didn’t quite get the contents of the book back in the day. I mainly got it for the cover and tried to draw them. Thinking about it now, I might have that drawing stored in backpack that contains all my old work. If I remember correctly, I put the thumbs in the wrong positions. I’ll upload it tomorrow. There was another cover that I really liked, maybe I’ll give that one a try as well (also tomorrow).

Update (4/9/21) – Couldn’t find that old drawing I was talking about, I did find a lot of rather embarrassing ones though… If I find it though I’ll post it here.

(Update 4/19/2021) – Found it, you can see it here: ( •̀ᄇ• ́)ﻭ✧

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

April 8, 2021 0

Aiming for no. 1

This is a colored version of the first inktober piece of 2019. I was wondering what kind of coloring styles would work with a piece that has quite a bit of hatching. But first I wanted to come up with a background. Since this is a piece of myself I decided to make the background my studio. I wanted to work with a simple background but still keep the idea of what it’s supposed to be. I would say it’s like impressionism. It was quite fun trying to recreate my room and liked the way it came out. Now the next thing is trying to match the painting in the background. I decided to go with a simple painting style like that of anime. When I was done painting I noticed that the colors were much too vibrant and dark so I went and modified the colors and vibrancy in Photoshop. I quite like the way it came out.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

January 10, 2020 0

First painting corel painter 2018 Sayumi Michishige

This painting was finished on August 15.

I’ve been wanting to learn how to add color to my pieces so the best way is to study photos and also see why other peoples paintings work by recreating them. Using the eyedropper tool is quite useful but I want to practice and learn how to choose color just by using my eyes and instincts. Doing it traditionally is easier since I’m limited to the colors I have in hand. But digitally I have to really focus and think about it since I have every color imaginable at my disposal so it can get a bit overwhelming and the chance of screwing up is quite a possibility.

At the time of this painting I had invested in upgrading my Corel version up to 2018. So this is the inaugural painting I did for it. Corel and Photoshop are quite different. Photoshop is quite versatile and one can do a lot of things with it quite easily when it comes to editing but I feel that Corel is the better program to paint. Something about it makes painting more intuitive. But I tend to switch from one to the other when creating new paintings regularly. Sometimes I hit a bump and for some reason seem to find it easier to do on the other program. (・∧‐)ゞ

In any case I of course chose Sayumi Michishige as the subject, as you can guess I really love her aesthetic and her photo books are filled with a lot of great pictures to choose from. As stated before I chose colors by eyeballing it and am surprised I wasn’t too far off. If you compare my painting to the photo of course there are a lot of differences but I feel like I managed to capture the essence and you can tell it’s Sayu right? (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

This is the reference picture used from Sayu’s photobook “La”:

Here is the process:

The eyes were too big so I had to resize them.

And that should wrap it up for now. I really loved working on this painting and am glad I was able to get it to this point. It looks realistic but also like a painting which I really like.

Hope you guys like it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

November 1, 2018 0

XERO DRAWING – Godzilla x Gypsy Danger Part I

Time spent: 5 hours 20 minutes

Materials used: Sakura 0.7 mechanical pencil, Faber Castell Perfection 7056 pencil eraser, eraser,

I am actually about half way done painting the drawing, but I had two drawings to do this week so I had no choice but to break it into two parts. For this drawing I wanted to do something a bit different, so I decided to draw Godzilla vs Gypsy Danger. Surprisingly it wasn’t as tough as I thought it would be, but it did take quite a bit of time to draw. And since painting it has a lot of details plus I am also trying out new techniques along the way.

Over all, it looks quite bland without any color or even shading so it looks mediocre. But that will all be fixed on the next segment.

Hope you look forward to it.

-XERO

August 23, 2014 0

Ending the Youtube videos… sort of.

For the past, maybe three years or so. I have been making Youtube videos of my drawings and the process that goes to make them. I felt that it was probably the best way to make my work be known and to make my self commit to drawing something weekly. At the time I was not really sure about my future and my self making art as a sustainable solution. I just wanted to test the waters and see if my art was good enough to attract the attention of people. What I found out was that it was really hard to compete against other youtubers who made all sorts of entertainment videos. Even more so going against other artists that had a large following and fan base like Mark Crilley. My over all results were hit or miss really.

At the beginning I took requests, and that seemed to make people get more exited to watch my videos and contribute ideas as well as comment and interact with the channel. That though meant that I would have to draw things that I didn’t really enjoy. But I went with it for about a year till my account was struck with penalties. That’s when I decided to open my secondary account that I still use to this day, Darkcloudxero. For a while I kept the same format and continued to ask for requests, but I noticed that my enthusiasm kept lowering as time went by. I eventually decided to stop taking request and focused on drawing things I liked, while also lessening the amount of video I uploaded. This in turn started to stunt the growth of my channel. Views started to dwindle, and so did comments. In the end the popularity of the video and drawing was hit or miss (many times the most unexpected one got more views).

The reason for why my videos did so poorly can be attributed on a number of things. I did not seem to put my utmost effort into my drawings when making videos (specially when taking some requests). I felt constrained to unpleasant static and stiff positions because of the camera (couldn’t move the sketch book too much or get close to the drawing otherwise I would block the view). Quality of the drawings was very inconsistent, some came out great while others just looked childish. Inconsistent uploading of videos, sometimes it took me a whole month in between videos. Drew things that were no longer in style (things or characters people no longer cared about). etc. etc.

Point is that I had to fix quite a bit of things. But I decided to give this part up, my work suffered a great deal because of it. And not only that, but it took a long time to draw something since I had to go by the time I was given by the battery. The time it took to charge was excruciating. Plus it also didn’t help that when I am drawing, I get in a zone where I just have to keep going without interruptions otherwise it just doesn’t feel right later on. So for the sake of producing better work, I decided to give up making videos and just focus on drawing and producing some awesome stuff.

Hope you look forward to it,

-XERO

February 7, 2014 0