"A Hopeless Dream Chaser"
Today’s model is Miyabi Natsuyaki. I had a couple of reference pictures to choose from her instagram, but I decided on this one:
It feels like we the viewers are sitting across from Miyabi. That little smile makes my heart skip a beat.
Hasta la proxima,
-Nube
Airi had a recent post where she had a really cute outfit. I just really wanted to draw her in it. The sweater has a lot of details which I wanted to draw. The colors are also really beautiful so I’m really looking forward to painting her sometime in the future.
Reference can be seen here:
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
This painting is somewhat bittersweet. On the one hand, it is the first painting done with my new drawing tablet but that is because my old Xp pen was no longer working properly after the latest Windows update. (I’ll probably talk about it more later at some point). I recently got a third job so time for painting has decreased by a good bit so I will probably be posting less than before. Maybe that’s a good thing though, it will give me some time to step away from a painting and look at them with fresh eyes.
Although I have only had my new tablet for a couple of days, I am enjoying it. The new monitor setup is a lot more comfortable as well. Man, it feels great being able to use Corel Painter again. I’m still a bit rusty with the oil brushes so this whole painting was mostly done using the sergeant brush. The model that will be the first painting is Momochi. I got the reference from a screenshot that I took from the making of “Hatachi Momochi”. Video Photobooks are great because I can get more references. Man, I’m glad I live in this amazing era. Thank you Momochi for making so many video appearances!
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Happy birthday Miyabi!
Time has been a bit short lately, but I somehow managed to paint a piece in time (at least in my location) for Miyabi’s birthday. This time I’m trying out a new oil brush in photoshop from the dry oil brushes by Martina Palazzese. I quite like the texture it gives, especially to the line art. Hopefully I’ll have a bit more time to play around with it on my next painting.
I quite liked the outfit Miyabi showed on her instagram and the one Peace wore on another picture. So I decided to combine them.
Miyabi:
Peace:
Because of the lack of time today, I went with a flatter coloring style which I want to practice more and get better at. One artist whom I really look up to in this regard is Takato Yamamoto. You can see his work here:
https://www.instagram.com/takatoy999/?hl=en
It seems his style is called “Heisei estheticism”, sound freakin awesome.
Hasta la proxima,
-Nube
After not making digital art for about two weeks I decided to paint once again but came to a rather sad surprise, my XP Pen is having some issues working with my art programs such as Corel, Krita and Clip Studio. The pen cursor gets trapped into a small central rectangle of the screen. Putting my pen on any part of the actual physical screen has the cursor stay in this invisible barrier on the center of the display (hopefully this makes sense). For whatever reason this problem isn’t happening in Photoshop though. I figured this was a perfect time to buy some brushes from an artist that I like, Toko Suzuki:
https://www.instagram.com/toko_suzuki/
I quite like the texture that Toko’s pieces have so I decided to buy the brush pack listed on the bio. So far I have only used the “Sampled brush 4 15”, but I quite like that rough texture and translucence that happens when using pressure variation. I’ll be practicing a bit more with them and then seeing some of the video tutorials to get a better sense of them.
Reference used is from Airi Suzuki’s instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/airisuzuki_official_uf/
and coloring inspiration was from the artist DannyLaiLai:
https://www.artstation.com/danny008
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
A rare pairing, Sayu and Miyabi.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
For today’s drawing, I have Momochi in her “Ai no Dangan” outfit riding a motorcycle. There are a lot of options and possibilities when it comes to adding a background. Maybe I should try out different styles when I end up painting it.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
An ink drawing of Momochi in a biker suit from the music video “Ai no Dangan”. This mv gives me some Bubblegum Crisis vibes which might me a good idea at some point.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Main video:
Extended version:
When I first used the the Sargent brush I wanted to try out it’s full capabilities and the first painting I used this on was with Momoko Tsugunaga. One other thing I wanted to try out was a painting with water drops and condensation. With that in mind, I chose Momoko’s photo from the variety show (I believe it is London Hearts) where her entire look was given a complete overhaul. It seems that these were for a calendar where different talents were all given the same treatment. It’s a shame but I couldn’t find any recordings of this online, only some screengrabs (this means someone out there does have it/had it). Based on said screen grabs there were about three different photos that I could have used (maybe for a later painting). There’s no denying that Momoko looks really cute with this look, but I prefer her more natural look better.
I mentioned this before, but I think I am finally forming my favorite tools for painting digitally. I’ve been slacking on watercolors though, so I should do some more traditional paintings soon.
As can be seen above, this painting comes with two Youtube links. I already have a couple of paintings that have been recorded and another one that has been edited and will be live this Thursday. Aside from speed paints, I want to make instructional videos where I focus on one technique/topic and just some videos about things that interest me (although I haven’t figured out how I want to structure them yet). Luckily Youtube is allowing songs to be used as long as the owners are cool with it, of course this also means that these videos get no monetization capabilities. Which is a good trade. I actually lost a past channel because of the old methods that Youtube had implemented.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
We are actually still getting snow where I live, so that inspired me to finally give this painting a try before the weather finally changes to a warmer one. I really love the colors of Airi in this cold weather and wanted to give it a try for a while now. It’s also been a while since I did a realistic painting so I opted to go for that. There are so many more photos I want to try painting so we’ll see when I get another chance.
This painting is based on Airi’s digital photobook vol. 92. I only used the real tapered wet flat brush for the whole piece. I like the brush but it can be hard to use because when I try to use the same paint color, I can’t quite get it back using the eyedrop tool since each bristle stroke is different and mixes together. I already have a number of paintings lined up where I kept trying out this brush and a new one that I believe is my new main brush, to be used with the oily bristle and tapered oils brush.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Originally drawn for inktober 2020 day 08.
It can be found here: https://darkcloudxero.com/2020/10/08/inktober-2020-08-airi-susuki/
I used the pastel brush for the background which gave it quite a bit of texture while still being rather loose. Airi was painted in flat colors using Photoshop before moving over to Corel Painter for the other color layers. I remembered that I had left the logo sections free which prompted me to add Suu-san and an A for Airi. For some reason it takes me longer to paint solid sections more than doing it freestyle using Corel Painter’s Oily Brush. Thinking about it now, it might be easier if I just rework the line art digitally and use the bucket tool like animators do. Aesthetically though, if the drawing itself isn’t good, I guess it won’t work either way. I also wonder if having solid black lines might be too much for this type of paintings. I’ll have to keep experimenting. I really want to do more studies of Airi, there are a couple of photos that I have had in mind.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I didn’t have any image in mind at the beginning but as I kept drawing I ended up with a pose that remind me of the music video for “Fighting Pose wa Date ja nai!”. While I was working on it, I finally remembered that I had turned off the smoothing function since my old computer setup couldn’t keep up. But that no longer is an issue. And it really makes the difference since my paint lines keep wobbling all over.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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