Despite the end of last year being quite dry, the start of this year has given us quite a bit of snow. I quite like the athmosphere this creates which is why I decided to use it for the painting this time around. The line art was done for Inktober 2021 day 27 which can be seen here:
The model for this painting is Sayumi Michishige. I really love the outfit and colors. I debated on how I wanted Sayu’s colors to be overall. Light and faded, or darker, affected by the scenery. I opted for the darker route.
Reference photo of Sayu can be seen here (7th Photo):
The recent photos that Sayu has been uploading are extremely beautiful. Many of them really capture the fall season (there’s so many I want to work with). I quite like the ones where she is sporting a cute mask. The pairing with the newsboy cap is a nice touch.
I was going to add some hatching to mark the darker areas and the patterns in the mask. But time was quite limited today so that will have to be another time.
The painted version of the inked drawing I made a year ago.
Inked version:
I had two options that I could use to color, the line art or the inked version. In this case, I went for the inked version. Because of this, I decided to go for a more flat style. I decided to have a red background, so the colors were based off of that. While I was painting, I was reminded of a problem that this drawing had. Her right eye (which is on our left). It was misaligned and a bit too low, which I feel was exemplified more when I painted Lin Lin.
This is the colored version of my Sayu drawing done with Copics. It was painted with Corel Painter and then used the layer styles from PhotoShop. Each style changes different aspects of the painting when it interacts with the line art and the painting layer. I think each one has it’s appeal. Soft light gave it a pastel look which I really liked. Because the copic ink doesn’t completely cover the texture of the paper and it also doesn’t always completely cover an area (there are some patches that are lighter), these can give interesting effects when painted digitally and played with the layer options. This can be affected even further when playing with the layer transparency.
It’s always fun when I draw Sayu. Recently she cut her hair down so I really want to do another piece with her new hair style.
I wanted to work with my Copic for the line art step. I have done this before and really like the effect that I can get out of it when I paint it digitally. Sadly it seems like my copic tips are getting worn out, they have this gummy feel to them now. I guess I’ll have to replace them soon.
I recently saw an artist that worked with light colors and used that as an aesthetic advantage. Usually when I paint, almost every time it looks really light so I worried whether it would look well to others or not. So this time I have decided to just paint like usual and try to not overwork the painting too much. What I did want to try though is a version where I just painted and let the colors separate the whole piece as a whole. In the second version I added some lighting to the hair, darkened the lips and added some linework. Personally I prefer the original version more although I do like the the linework version as well. I went for a semi realistic/anime style. This mainly entails that one keeps the detail on the face as flat as possible and making the eyes bigger. Of course one can play with the style and how far to push the details which will give different effects. I chose to add a good number of facial details but using very light tonal changes that are noticeable but that are not very abrupt and still keep the coloring style a bit flat. As for the eyes I decided to keep the main shape and colors intact but made them bigger and enlarged the eyelashes a bit.
This study was done using a photo from Momoko Tsugunaga’s last photobook. Happy Birthday Momochi, thank you for everything you have done. Even now your work still makes everyone happy. And this of course includes me. Now that more media is becoming available to us overseas fans and that I can understand a bit more Japanese, I have so much media that I can now enjoy for the first time. It’s a shame my skills were not good enough back when you were still active. Although I love that not only did you have a goal in life (as a teacher), but you accomplished it on top of all your idol activities. The motivation you emanate is absolutely stunning. I truly hope that you are doing well and enjoying life. I can only hope that my art reaches you and makes you even just a fraction of the happiness you have given me.
I wanted to once again give the 90s anime aesthetic another try today. I painted Saki using Photoshop and the background with Corel Painter. For the texture that makes it look like it’s being shown in an old tv I used the Photoshop filter (I believe it was noise) which gave me just the right textured I wanted. I could have gotten away with it if I had muted the colors a bit more but this works even better.
Saki’s outfit and dance moves are quite amazing in this pv. I wonder if she would ever consider doing a solo career? I’m just glad she is still active online though, I really enjoy seeing her Kendama progress.
Today’s prompt is float. Since we are nearing Halloween and the prompt is float, I decided to draw a witch. After a little bit of thought I decided to draw Morda from Berserk. I wonder is she will be joining the party once they leave the island? It would be strange is she didn’t. This time I decided to just go ahead and come up with a pose from my mind. When I was done, I noticed that it was similar to what was drawn in chapter 361. I guess that image stayed in mind.
Today was a rough one but I managed to make some time to draw. Today I decided to draw one of the planned drawings I talked about a couple of days ago. I had to composite many reference pictures that I had screen captured before October I believe. I was unsure if I should draw her at a closer view or not (if I had I would have had more time to add more details and ink/hatch the drawing). But I really wanted to draw Saki’s outfit from Otona na no yo! She looks like a really cute doll. Personally I believe she had the best outfit by far for that music video. While I was looking at the screenshots of the mv (it took me a while but I captured all scenes where Saki appeared, most of the video), I got to compare everyone’s movements during the dance scenes. She can really move. Her dance moves are powerful and cute, I don’t really know how to describe them but the flow and execution are definitely top notch. No wonder she is the captain.
I had a couple of ideas about what the next ink drawing I would do, then when I got back from work I started getting some more ideas. That lead to me preparing a lot of screengrabs for references… so I just started running out of time (I didn’t even finish). I then had to scramble to find something to draw. Looking at the prompt for inktober I decided to draw this cute girl in a bulky jacket.
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