It’s time to reveal the main subject that corresponds to this background. It’s Meimi Tamura. The reference I used is from her music video Butai. I really love the song and music video it self. There are many scenes I want to give a try in painting but that will be for another time.
Here is the music video, do check it out:
We have come to the end of Spring, my second favorite season. I managed to make a few seasonal paintings to celebrate but I had more ideas that i didn’t get to do this time. Hopefully I will manage to do better next year. Next paintings will be about the Summer (my least favorite season due to the heat).
Originally I just wanted to paint Gojo. After catching up with the manga I now understand why people love him so much. But after painting him in, he looked so lonely. So I had to contemplate what to do or who to pair him with. Ultimately I knew one thing for sure, I didn’t want Suguru Geto in it. I personally really like the relationship he had with Iori, they look really fun together.
Next was how to pose Iori with Gojo. Seeing as I had already had him curled up, it just made sense to have Iori sitting on his back.
One of the things I worried about while painting this though was the cityscape. The buildings (some of them anyway) seemed to have been new in 2022 based on the Google Street View reference I used. Meaning the landscape would look completely different when Gojo and Iori were younger. But on the other hand, finding interesting locations from various angles would be a bit tough, especially period correct.
Been wanting to paint this for quite a bit now. This week has been quite rainy and tomorrow it will apparently be raining all day so it also fits the occasion. The background itself wont be finished till I add the main subject though.
This will be the background for one of my recent favorite characters. Although that series has a lot of characters that I like. Because of the amount of details this felt a bit daunting when I first started working on it. But not much one can do except just do it. Having said that, after I finished working on it I decided to buy some transparent rulers to make long straight lines easier and more uniform. I don’t know why I was so hardheaded and didn’t do so earlier.
The background it self made me appreciate Google Maps so much more. I forgot that I could just use it to get background locations from different vantage points and modify my location to get a more aesthetic shot on the fly. I’m so glad I’m living now.
I’ve been told about Chainsaw Man quite a while ago, but it wasn’t till not that long ago that I finally started reading the manga. Personally I prefer the second part more with Asa Mitaka. Having said that, Kobeni is definitely one of my favorite characters. Hope she makes a comeback at some point. With the fan theories out there, that just might happen.
Curtain Background for a future piece. Despite being quite simple, I liked using the variation of colors to simulate shadows and color bouncing off the surroundings.
I can’t believe that this painting has been waiting for weeks now. Seems it’s been ready to go since January 4th. I tried making the straight line by hand but of course they were really off. So I used the rectangle tool to guide me for the hard lines and softened areas as needed. Looking at it now, I would probably play with the colors a bit. But I might come back to it at a later date. Overall though I like it.
Background for a current painting. I almost have the feel I want, but I can’t really finish the background until I add in the subjects and make everything cohesive.
Another year, another attempt at painting Athena Asamiya. This is the third rendition. I’m getting there. Looking at it know, there are a few details that I may come back to, but it’s a huge improvement from the last version.
Quick answer for those who don’t want to read, disconnect anything on the USB ports that are on the XP-Pen tablet (The one’s on top of all the other cable ports).
So for a couple of weeks I’ve had to work with a sluggish/lagging tablet. And let me tell you, if recording my process was already slowing me down. This was so much worse. I didn’t know what was going on but I powered through it. But this week I decided to finally try and fix it. All my drivers were up to date, so were Windows updates. Re-installing the XP-Pen driver and art programs also didn’t help. I even went and bought some more ram sticks after closing as many internet tabs but seeing no change. The ram also didn’t help. Then I figured it would be a virus perhaps. So I erased everything on my hard drive and reinstalled Windows.
Now with a clean install it should work now right? No. It was still lagging. I even changed the canvas size but that didn’t help. Heck, even just testing the pen input was making it lag. Changing any settings within the art programs that were giving other artist problems was also a no go.
Feeling like I would just have to get used to it, I remembered that a couple of weeks ago I added my keyboard and mouse to the USB ports on the XP-Pen. In theory (I thought) they are only going through a passthrough so it shouldn’t affect the tablet. But at this point I just had to try anything. And much to my surprise, that’s what it was. Being able to paint with no lag was amazing.
I’m pretty sure I ‘m sending all data through the USB C cable, so either the port on the motherboard or the cable itself is not able to move the needed bandwidth thus the lagging issues. So if you have tried everything else and are still seeing lag issues try this possible fix.
The latest piece that I’m currently working on. It’s the castle at a certain amusement park. I was wondering how I would deal with so many details. But once I got into the groove it wasn’t too bad. It’s obviously not one to one to the reference photo, but I feel I capture the essence. Detailed, but not so much that it will overtake the actual subject.
Airi made a cute post on her Instagram promoting CDTV’s New Year Live 2024. I wanted to paint something for Chinese New Year and this was the perfect subject. Her outfit was super cute.
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