I really miss Buono! I’m so glad they have so many recorded media of their activities. What’s great is that there are a lot of new fans appearing. Their legacy continues to grow!
This painting took me longer than I thought it would but I’m finally finished. I went with an 80s anime style. I started with the background and then started painting from left to right. The line art was overlaid digitally then set to multiply. The base colors went in first then I started adding the leopard, polka dots and star designs, etc. I then created a separate layer where I multiplied the shadow layers. Then above all the layers for each member I created a new one for the lighting. To keep with the anime aesthetic I chose the typical anime hair colors so that they popped more. For their eyes, I chose their member colors.
As I was working on this painting I got reminded that Berryz Koubou’s 18th debut anniversary was on March 3rd. Sadly I wasn’t able to do a piece to commemorate it though. I still wan to make one though. I have an idea for one, but maybe I should save that one for their 20th anniversary. Or maybe I should just make that one, we’ll see.
A great intro to Buono! is Hatsukoi Cider. Check it out here (Their official video has over 5 million views!):
Didn’t have the time to finish it today but at least the line art is ready. I was thinking about uploading an inked version but this refined pencil line art will do for now. I saw the prompt for idols and of course I had to draw something for it. There are many options but I decided to go with BUONO! The formation of Momoko, Miyabi and Airi was just magical.
I found a fansite that had a large collection of Airi’s photos that I had no seen before. One of the albums contained photos of Airi’s collaboration with Pivotdoor. There’s a lot of possible drawing ideas but I was really drawn to Airi flying with a broom like a magical girl. Her photos are always so fun and full of energy. That smile is really infectious.
It was also a bonus that her hairstyle was specially cut for her end of the year °C-ute concert. I was just about finished yesterday painting Airi when my brother walked in and asked when I would make a painting that took longer. I was wondering if he meant that I was rushing through this painting and was leaving it too rough. But it seems he just meant that lately I have only been doing line art which takes only a couple of hours (Airi as well). That’s when I decided to add a background. Using the wall background would not do so I decided to make a winter scenery. I ended up mashing up a couple of reference photos (including some from Airi’s photobooks). It looks like the road crossing the train tracks is heading straight to the sea huh? I guess the idea is that there is a ramp for people to drive towards the beach.
I was a bit apprehensive about the details in the sweater when I was just about to start, but luckily with my current experience I know that it’s just a matter of painting and now stopping. Once that flow starts, it doesn’t take that long to finish. Once I added the background, I did have to tweak the saturation and values on Airi though.
There’s this artist named Criisalys that I really like. I’ve seen the art a while ago being used by Macross 82-99. I’m surprised it took me this long to find the actual artists Twitter and Instagram. It can be found here:
I want to try out this style. The model for this will be the beautiful Miyabi Natsuyaki. There are always great reference photos to choose from, but ended up going with this one:
I really like this look, it’s very Aesthetic and would fit with the coloring style I’m trying to emulate.
One other notable thing to mention has to do with my new Xp-Pen tablet/monitor. So I have a set up of multiple monitors and have now added monitor profiles to switch some of them off. This has the added effect though that some of my windows get scrambled, including what monitor is selected for my Xp-Pen. But I noticed that I could move the cursor on other monitors. Today I decided to try it out and it works great (I was cleaning up the drawing). There doesn’t seem to be pressure though… but for simple and quick fixes/painting this works out great.
I’ve been working on this painting for a couple of days now. I first drew the line art with a combination of my brush and my g pen for Airi’s base body, not including her clothes. I did this because I feel I make clothes look to stiff with the pen. For the background I used a lighter mixture of my ink while Airi herself was inked using a more concentrated ink mixture.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been playing around with the shortcut keys I feel I need most to make paintings more efficiently. I’m really glad I did because it made the painting process flow much smoother. The painting was much brighter but I feel this darker amber atmosphere fits the scene a whole lot better.
Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays! I think I’m going to take a three day break and just chill for a while. Hope you guys have a great time.
For the painting of Miyabi in her maid outfit I used a couple of references for the pose, one of them happened to be of Miyabi in her outfit for the Hello Project Winter 2019 Concert. I really loved the pose, the dress and the crown working together to make Miyabi look so beautiful. This time I wanted to hatch and cross hatch. The line art itself was done with my g pen and the hatching was done with my maru pen.
I recently talked about how my monitors were not calibrated correctly so my colors and values were off. I’m going back and trying to fix some of the previous paintings I have done. Miyabi dressed as a maid is of course one of those paintings.
Based on the drawing I made for this year’s Inktober for day 23. Because watercolor lifts the ink and makes the drawing really muddy, I traced it with my lightbox using only my pencil. I actually had to redo it twice because I was trying to erase the lines and graphite smudges before I started painting but then I couldn’t see the lines anymore… Erasing is ok on some papers, but not on the one I was using this time…
Luckily I still managed to finish the painting today despite a couple of setbacks. One of the biggest ones was the fear of messing up. It’s been a while since I last painted traditionally so that’s always a bit intimidating. But it’s always a matter of just starting. I almost messed it up right out of the gate since I didn’t completely clean the main brush I used (it still had some ink in it). The good things was that I could still lift up the affected area (it was the face…).
I really love watercolors. The look it has and versatility are just amazing.
I just had to paint Miya in her maid outfit with the nostalgic Buono! pose. I couldn’t find the whole outfit look from the waist down so I had to make it up.
Every once in a while I check out the Goodwill auctions and was surprised when I found a Surface Pro 5 being sold. From the pictures shown it seemed to be in pristine condition and had the keyboard cover included. So I decided to take a chance and bid on it. And to my surprise I won. It took a while to get to me which sucked but in the mean time I ordered the accesories that were missing (these being the charger and the surface pen). Luckily I managed to find a genuine used charger and the pen was on sale for that week I was searching for it. When I finally received it I was surprised that it came with the original packaging. The actual surface pro was a bit dirty but looked almost new after I cleaned it. It has me thinking just who bought it and why they decided to donate it. I got the i5 with 8gb or ram which worried me since Corel Painter works better with stronger specs.
You know it’s funny, I was a bit stressed since I had to remind the Goodwill to send it. Which made the wait time longer than it should have been. But by the time it arrived, it was pretty much already October… meaning Inktober. It wasn’t till just the end of last week that I had a chance to finally test it out.
And the first model to be painted using my new Microsoft Surface Pro 5 is Momoko Tsugunaga. This time I used some screenshots I took from her last Photobook where she was inside an ice cream parlor. There were many amazing scenes to choose from, but I decided on this when where Momochi was looking out the window pensively as she was reflected off a picture frame. I painted the background first, then to Momochi and finished with Momochi’s reflection. I think she came out super cute.
So, how did the Surface Pro handle Corel Painter? To my surprise it was quite smooth. Although some things were a bit slow to react (such as making successive brush strokes or changing the brush size using the bracket keys), it wasn’t really by that much. All in all, as long as I have it in high performance during painting sessions it works without any problems. I’m actually quite amazed. Now, I haven’t really been keeping track but painting nonstop with High performance enabled gave the battery about 3-4 hours of life before I had to recharge it. Recharging is also quite amazing, it takes about 30-45 minutes to fully charge it. After a full days worth of painting the Surface Pro did get warm but it wasn’t uncomfortably hot at all which again was also very surprising considering just how thin it is. I already made a second painting so this quick first impressions is taking into account both experiences. What’s great is that it works as a tablet with the power of a computer at all other times. I was worried that I may have had to upgrade to a new stronger version but this works amazingly well.
has been waiting for about a month now to be uploaded. Actually looking at the date, it seems I painted this back in September 6… I had something planned to accompany this piece but I could always add that later.
I wanted a late 80s/ early 90s look. I wanted to emphasize the speed so I manipulated the tilt of the median and buildings to give that effect. Looking at it now, adding some wind lines in the foreground will sell that effect even more. I’ll probably add that to the accompaniment I mentioned above.
I just remembered that it took me a good while to find the model of the motorcycle (it was specially hard since I don’t really know much about them). For those interested in knowing the motorcycle used in the Ai no Dangan MV, it was a Honda VFR 1200F.
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