Line art from inktober 2021 day 11.

As we learned from chapter 5.5 of Astral Buddy, Misaki exercises (or at least tries to) in her apartment. Alone. For this reason I chose this setting. Just using the basic layout in the manga I decided to go with the point of view of looking towards the window. Although it was a cool idea, I wasn’t really thinking about the window at all.

So as I was painting the floor, and the wall I was feeling really good because I was doing it with no references and just instinct. But when I came to the window it finally hit me. The window has to have a reflection… For that I did have to see references to try and learn how I can make it work. So for that I started working in sections, painting over each section at a time. The base layer was just blue, then I started working with the reflections. I started with the floor then the bed which would be in front of Misaki. The second part was reflecting the rooms walls. For that I used the wall’s colors but mixing them with the blue base to get a translucence look. From there I played with lighter light transfer to emphasize the furthest part of the room to a more solid color of the wall to showcase how close the ceiling is to the window. Looking at the references online, the lights outside (in cityscapes) are quite vibrant and go through the reflections. Looking through the To Aru anime, the window lights (from the skyscrapers) are usually turquoise. The final part of the window reflections were about Misaki Shokuhou, but first I had to paint her.

I didn’t have much of a plan to paint Misaki, so I started painting her exposed body first. Whit the vase idea done, I started working on the sweat beads. Luckily I had an idea of how it looks like on surfaces thanks to the painting I did of Momochi.

That can be seen here:

The second section I painted were the shorts, luckily this was pretty straight forward. I decided to work on the shirt next because I wanted to figure out how to do it. I started with a base light warm gray and started playing around with lighter areas (the folds and shirt bumps), then for the areas that are tight on the body, I made see through to simulate the sweat. In these areas I played with the way light reflects off the wet shirt and the areas that are in the shade.

For the third section I painted the hair. With Misaki mainly painted, I started playing around with the painting and added more sweat around the body.

This time I wanted to try out making the line art more translucent (I think I put it at around 30% opacity) and adding an outline in a layer underneath with colors that correspond to each part of Misaki. I’m going to be playing around with this style more.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE