"A Hopeless Dream Chaser"
There was a ranking done by current idols regarding their all time favorite songs. I was sad that there was no Berryz Koubou and ℃-ute songs that made it, but we got the ultimate convergence of both groups up to second place. Buono! Seeing that made me so happy and tear up again. They have so many good and fun songs but of course they went for Hatsukoi Cider.
Hasta mañana,
-NUBE
Last time I uploaded the rough draft, this time it’s the cleaned line art. I decided to finish it all using Clip Studio Paint. Next time I’ll upload the background.
Hasta mañana,
-NUBE
Here is a rough draft for a future painting of Buono!
Hasta mañana,
-NUBE
It took a while but I finally managed to finish this painting to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Berryz Koubou and ℃-ute first known as the Hello Project Kids. I was wondering what I should draw\paint to celebrate and remembered the I believe Hello Morning episode where they announced the finalists who would be joining Hello Project. The delayed reaction of everyone learning that they were all chosen to stay was funny and cute. There was a good delay before they all reacted to the news. This I believe was a great moment to paint since this is where it all began.
Thank you for this past 20 years. And here’s to celebrating the future ones as well.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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!):
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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.
The reference was from their 2016 Festa Concert.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
The line art was first done for inktober 2020 day 21. This painting was done on Sunday but decided to upload today. For this painting I decided to go for a simpler anime style which can be quite aesthetically pleasing. I wanted to add a good amount of detail but still keep it quite simple and not over work it. I really like this image from Kiss!Kiss!Kiss! I believe this is my second time drawing it but first time painting it. It was a relaxing and pleasant experience.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
A couple of days ago Airi posted an instagram story of her pretending to drive or should I say race a car while some Eurobeat played in the background. I believe it was Deja Vu but I may be wrong (it was definitely one of the iconic songs). I was actually quite surprised that Airi was aware of Initial D so it was a great surprise. It’s a shame it was a story and wasn’t left permanently on her instagram because I really wanted to see it again.
After watching the video I decided to make a drawing about it. I wasn’t too sure of what car to choose for Airi. At first I was thinking of using one of the cars that appeared on the Buono! music videos but then I figured I should choose a small compact car that was a bit more in the AE-86 class. So a small compact car that fit with the English theme of Buono!… I for some reason like the aesthetic of mini coopers so I ended up going with that. Luckily I had some references of mini coopers in my references collection so I really just had to find some references of Airi and Takumi (as well as his 86 which for some reason I didn’t have many of). I made a lot of mistakes while I was drawing but I cleaned what I could with my Nicker poster color which worked really well. After I was done inking and shading with ink I then used Photoshop to clean up the pencil marks and adjusting the black and white levels. Once I had that going I then used Clip Studio to add in the sound effects that are so iconic of Initial D.
I quite liked the way it came out. Hope you guys enjoy it as well.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
For today’s drawing/painting I decided to try out some of the inks that I created yesterday. Since I would only be doing the lineart with it and coloring it I went with the lightest ink I have. As for the style I went with LittleThunder‘s style and coloring since it is probably my favorite traditional art style. Today before I had begun today’s drawing I saw her latest art video of her painting one of her drawings. So with that in mind I went with a more simple and flat coloring style only adding some coloring in the skin and hair. I really love the way it came out. Although I have yet to try this coloring style with a background which of course would have a lot of variables that I would have to work with. But that will be for another work and day. I quite like the way the ink interacts with the copic markers.
I really liked the photo I used from Airi‘s instagram. It has a retro 80s-90s look which really fits with this coloring style.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
The plan was to try out the other color pencil set I had but the colors weren’t right for the drawing I decided to do. But my Prismacolor set did have the right colors so I decided to use those instead. I was surprised at how amazing they were. I was having a lot of problems with them back in the day I remember, but I guess that was just my inexperience. Having said that, I’m nowhere near as good as the artists that specialize in color pencils. I was recently looking at the artwork of michaelfreemanpastelartist. He specializes in using pastel pencils it seems, and his art is photo realistic. It’s really amazing. I guess if I practice for a bit I should be able to improve a great deal my self, but my plan is to focus more on watercolors when it comes to traditional art. Instead I will use my color pencils as support. This has been the plan for a good bit, but I’ve never really used them together before. Maybe I’ll make that my next project.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
It’s kind of a shame I didn’t do this one for Airi’s birthday but I was quite busy so it couldn’t be helped. This drawing was done in April 17 of 2019. I tried painting it on the 23rd using the reference picture as a guide for the colors as well. But it didn’t end well. The line art was just not working correctly with the painting. So over all it looked quite unnatural and weird. I then tried again on the 25th after I got frustrated and made the colors simpler and more anime like in an effort to make the lineart work better. But the result wasn’t much better. I just had too much trouble trying to blend them together. Well, after a year of countless hours of painting I decided to give it another try. I won’t lie, I still had that trauma of not being able to paint it correctly but the only way to find out is to just go ahead and do it. Annoyingly I did have some problems when I started painting it. Seeing as the line work was pretty dark and plentiful (when it came to the hatching) it just didn’t look right. I tried flat colors thinking that would work but after three tries I had to stop and rethink everything. The next day though I finally decided to paint it the way I have been painting lately. But this time I decided to make the linework lighter, I left it at around 65% of the darkness. Also, this time I decided to try and not look at the reference photo and just paint it the way I believed would work. Also, since most of my paintings have been coming out quite light (in terms of color and values), I decided to go for a more vibrant and deeper color pallette. And well, I really like the result.
I have noticed I have been working mainly with the warm colors in the yellow and red range, but whenever I try to do another color scheme I mess it up or it just doesn’t look right. I want to try cool colors for my next piece.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I drew another ink drawing. I was looking through Sergey Orlov aka punksy‘s artwork and wanted to do another 80s style drawing. I want to paint it with a simple color scheme. But that will be later. I used both the g pen and the maru pen. I really love the thin lines I get from maru pens. The only reason I hadn’t used them for so long was because the ink didn’t flow out of the pen. But after thinning out the ink with water that solved the problem and man am I glad for that. One thing I wanted to try out was this set of Chinese watercolors, but to my surprise it didn’t contain black. After mixing blue, green and yellow I got an okay looking grey but instead I decided to water down the black ink. I quite like the way it worked out and will experiment with it more next time.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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