Momochi is the first painting on my new clean install. I started with the sergeant brush which was a bit rough (looking). When I painted Momochi it became obvious that it definitely didn’t fit well together. So I used the tapered oil to soften the edges and blend things together a bit. This also helped give the feeling of distance. Momochi’s outfit was a bit tough at the beginning since I had to come up with different shades of white for each piece of clothing. Then there are slight shades of blue and greens that interact with the reflections and shadows from the snow. I left the face and hair for the end. With the surrounding colors finally figured out, working for these last colors was much more straight forward.
In computer news. So far so good, while painting I encountered no problems what so ever. So I should be able to just paint without any problems from now on.
The day almost passed but I somehow made it. Happy Birthday Momochi! I really hope you’re doing great. Although I know you followed your dream, I still selfishly wish you were active. I’m so glad you were really active back in the day because luckily you appeared in a lot of media.
It’s no secret that I love drawing Momochi. Drawing her has been a great source of inspiration in my art journey. Here’s to more in the coming years.
The outfit is from her photobook, the references I used were from the Digital Hello Project Photobooks vol. 98. I liked her pose and smile from different photos, so I used them to create this drawing (along with others that showcase more of the outfit). This is still a work in progress. I’m probably going to paint it digitally (now that I can finally do it).
After finishing the last Buono painting, my computer decided to blue screen uncontrollably. I encountered some of that while painting but the computer was unusable after I finished luckily. It took me four clean installs until I finally managed to fix it this morning. Good thing I have all my data in separate drives just for these occasions. Seems like my scratch disk was the one causing the problem (first time I have ever seen that happen). As soon as I replaced it, the problems ceased. Now everything is working correctly.
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.
For the Momochi Pose line art I decided to ink it and hatch it.
Yesterday I went to Meow Wolf. Inside was an art display by Future Fantasy Delight. The black and white art really popped and looked amazing. It was obvious that the artist had a lot of inspiration of anime/manga and Mexican culture (such as with the Mijo Miho character). I really need to make more black and white drawings.
There were a couple of areas that I did have to edit digitally and other areas that I had to clean up. Cheap Paper is cool to practice with, but I should seriously stop using it with my dip pens. The sharp tips lift up a lot of of the paper fibers. The areas that I inked were done using a brush. One thing I don’t like when I scan my artwork is that the light from the scanner exaggerates the dimples/texture in the paper. To the point where it creates blank spots. This happens as well with watercolors. I wonder if this is why some artists prefer to photograph instead of scan.
I finally finished making my new lightbox so I can now transfer line art as many times as I want so that I can practice more traditional styles.
Since I want to use my lightbox but don’t like having to move everything over and over again, I think it’s time that I finally make the lightbox that will fit in the desk opening. For that, I will scavenge the light and parts of my old lightbox. It took me a couple of hours but it was worth it.
This painting was done using my Holbein Watercolors. I like that I can play around with the opaqueness and vibrancy of the colors. But it’s obvious that I need to practice more. As I was painting I noticed that Momochi’s left (to our right) eye was misaligned. So when I was done painting I modified it digitally. I was going to leave the background blank but decided to add some blue brush strokes to emphasize the cold temperatures.
I want to try using the brushstrokes and colors that Alpay uses. They are amazing. But I also want to do ink drawings… Meaning that it would be a great if I transferred my line art to another paper. This calls for the use of a lightbox.
So I have a lightbox I built quite a while ago, but it takes a lot of space. It no longer works with my current setup. But, the desk I built has a place left open so that I would slide in a lightbox but I never built it. I think it might be time I scavenge the lights and built a smaller version that can dock into my desk.
Time was limited today so I drew a quick sketch. It has been snowing pretty consistently lately where I live, so I want to make more snow based artworks before we move into the spring season. This time I wanted to draw Momochi skiing from her time in Country Girls. She was really in her element it seemed when she was doing it in the DVD Magazine vol. 2. I wonder if she went skiing often?
I’m not sure what I will do with this line art. I could shade it with pencil, transfer it to another paper and paint it with watercolor or paint it digitally. We’ll see.
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.
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