Miyabi Natsuyaki Birthday 2020

Have been super busy lately with school and work so I missed it by a day but happy birthday Miyabi. It’s still the 25th of August over here though. I really love the recent photos she uploaded with long hair and her white dress. It makes her look like a cute elf or fairy. So with that in mind I searched for a photo that incorporated foliage and summer together. Seems like the reference for the background I used is from the movie “Secret Garden”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I wonder if people will know just by looking at it though.


I hope you have a great year in these coming months Miyabi. It makes me really happy when I find out that you not only see my work but also like it. I hope you like this painting as well. I really loved doing it.

Miyabi references used: https://www.instagram.com/p/CEJsut9FIX1/

Reference picture of the background: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/586875395162024592/


I hope you have a great year in these coming months Miyabi. It makes me really happy when I find out that you not only see my work but also like it. I hope you like this painting as well. I really loved doing it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Grace Jones

Was looking at my Japanese vintage ads folder and came across one for Grace Jones advertising the New Celica. After that I learned that she was not only a model but also an actor (quickly found out about her role in the Conan movie) and a singer. My favorite song of hers is “I’ve Seen That Face Before”. I’ve never worked with such dark skin tones before so I really wanted to give it a try. There are more blue tones in the reference photo but since I used a red background I changed the tones accordingly. While I was at it I also changed the pose a bit.

80s, CorelPainter2020, darkskin, DARKCLOUDXERO, digitalart, GraceJones, pointingfinger, Pose, redlips, ShortHair, vogue, wink

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Godzilla and Miki Saegusa

Wasn’t too sure what direction I was going to take on this painting. At first I was thinking of doing an anime style piece but as I was working on it, it started to morph more towards a realistic style but still with a painterly style. As I kept working on it I just came to love with what I was able to do so I kept going at it. The idea of doing a Godzilla painting with Miki Saegusa the psychic from the Heisei era of the films (my favorite era). I wanted to do a painting where I superimpose Miki over the whole painting like in some anime transition or ending scenes. If you have seen anime especially those done in the 80s and 90s you probably know what I’m talking about.
You can see an example here.

I quite like the way it came out. Some sections can be refined a bit more but that loose application of strokes I think helps point the attention more to Miki then to Godzilla.I do wonder if I should have added some psychic waves emanating from Miki, though I really don’t know how I would go about it and make it look good.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Robo Pirate behind Goku Aliens parody

One of the fun things of seeing original Dragon Ball are the references to other stories or media that Akira Toriyama likes. And now that my exposure to more media has expanded I can now see more of it whenever I rewatch Dragon Ball. One such character is the Robot Pirate that is a really cool reference to the Xenomorph from Alien. What I really like about the design is the obvious inspiration to Alien while still making an original and cool design. I knew that when I rewatched Dragon Ball about two years ago I wanted to make a parody painting. It took me two years to finally do it, but that’s just the way things work out sometimes. The scene is of course in reference to the iconic scene with Newt, moments before she was abducted by a Xenomorph.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Strike freedom Ocean Survival

This one as done using both Corel Painter and Photoshop. I was quite busy last week so I wasn’t able to really work on it last week. Today I finally had a chance to finish it. The scene itself is somewhat based on the fight Kira had with Shin in the ocean (although I just remembered that he was using the Freedom at that time…

Background based on a photo by MGMoscatello found here.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

PC98 inspired EVA Unit 00

Will write a description next time I have some time. This one had a lot of steps.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Happy Birthday Sayu 2020

I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish these presents in time but I was somehow able to do it. I thought I would also try out a new technique (for me) emulating Ichiro Tsuruta’s artwork that was used for the Noevir Cosmetic Renaissance ads. I would classify it as Japanese 80s Art Deco but of course I could be wrong.

Thank you for all these years of bringing happiness to your fans Sayu, I always look forward to checking out what you bring us.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Momochi in the beach

Man, this one is already about a year old now. I was planning on releasing it at some point but it never happened and ultimately I decided to release it when it got hot out again. And seeing as the weather has been getting hot lately (plus I haven’t uploaded in a while) I figure now would be a good time to upload it. The painting of Momoko is the same that was done a year ago but wasn’t pleased with the background so I tried out my new pc upgrades with this piece by painting a new beach background. There is no more stuttering or slowing down anymore (although the temps of the CPU are a bit worrisome). I tried out some of the other brushes that Corel Painter offers and saw no problems at all. Last time I tried it with my old components my pc couldn’t keep up. Although it could handle my favorite oil brush it tended to close up (Corel) on me from time to time. The last time when I was painting the Buono piece I lost half an hour’s worth of work which really sucked. I was going to wait on upgrading for a bit longer but after that happened I decided to pull the trigger. And I’m very happy I did.

I really like Momochii’s Yurushite Nyan pose so I went with that when I first drew her. My thought process at the time was to try out 80s/90s style painting which can look extremely beautiful if done right. But as mentioned when I was looking at the old background it just wasn’t up to par so I made a new one that would fit Momoko.

I’m planning on making more paintings throughout the summer ( I actually have had some ideas floating around for a while now). But work and my decision to make a desk computer will be keeping me busy for a bit longer. Hopefully the extra space in the desk will help cool down my cpu and gpu if not I’m going to have to invest in a new cooler…

It has also been a while since I’ve done some traditional watercolor paintings so I hope to get back into that as well.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Rei Sailor Moon redraw

My brother told me about this redraw challenge for Sailor Moon. It seems that people are mainly focusing on on a certain screenshot. But I wanted to change it up a bit, which others have done as well. I would say that Rei is my favourite of the sailor members so I wanted to paint her. I really like the aesthetic of her in the pink overalls so I chose that scene. Background wasn’t too much of a problem but I painting Rei did take a good amount of time. Though since I wasn’t using other references as I painted her had me processing every step.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Elsa Granhiert エルザ・グランヒルテ

This drawing was originally done for inktober 2019 on day 4. My first main goal was to make an anime painting with hard color changes. When I was done I noticed that it didn’t fit in at all with the texture background I had started. They didn’t fit together at all. So I was a bit disappointed. It looked amazing with a completely white background though. The colors were really vibrant and had really light and dark tones so I wondered what type of background would fit. After I was done painting Elsa in I thought about it for a while and decided to paint the background with Corel. I had absolutely no plan when painting but after just choosing a base color that would fit with Elsa’s color scheme I just started adding color till I eventually ended up with her sitting on a her comfy seat surrounded by some curtains (I believe that’s what they would be called). But Elsa still did not fully fit in with the background. It didn’t look back bad but the lights weren’t interacting with her at all. So I then put a gradient on her to darken the bottom half of her body and putting the layer on multiply.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Misaka level 6 shift

I’m currently watching the To Aru Kagaku no Railgun T anime. I’m really pleased with it. Unlike with To Aru majutsu season 3, they didn’t rush the series and the animation looks really beautiful. There were a couple of shots that used cgi that were moving a bit too fast and weird at the beginning but it seems they got used to it in the later episodes.

I really like Sogiita Gunha’s character so seeing him fight right next to Touma is amazing. Because this is one of my favourite scenes I decided to paint it.

Surprisingly this piece only took me three days to do. I guess I have been improving…

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Suzuki Airi Red Hat Painter 2020

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

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑