This week has been something… Somehow I was able to make progress on this painting though. Here is the background for now. We have been having waves of strong winter storms lately where I live, and it seems like more are coming on the way. Winter this year has been living up to it’s name (and the end of the last).
I’ll upload the finished painting on Monday if all goes well.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
For today’s art piece I decided to give a past painting another try. Today I repainted Chizuru Kagura which I originally did on December 2021.
It can be seen here:
… Yeah, this drawing definitely needed a makeover. I removed the line art and instead softened the lines I painted. The eyes I resized and also softened Chizuru’s eyelashes.
Hasta la proxima,
-Nube
We’re finally getting close to the end of the summer. The mornings are no longer freakin hot, now it’s usually cool before it begins to heat up. This drawing was a quick one i did when the heat was almost unbearable throughout the day and even night. I wanted to do a quick and simple drawing with a simple coloring scheme that I’ve seen from other artists.
I have one last summer painting for this year and will now begin doing some autumn artwork. October is also almost here, which means Inktober. This year I plan on making more finished drawings instead of just line art.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Here is another ink painting using Corel Painter 2023. I do wonder though, can I get similar effects just using the blending sargeant brush? I guess mixing brushes are now part of my style because I wish I could blend instead of having to glaze over and over. Its not supper time consuming, but it would be quicker to blend. Either way, monochromatic paintings are quite soothing.
I really love the ad for the Yamaha SHS-10 or the Sholky (which appears to mean shoulder keyboard) with Yuki Matsushita jamming. The actual CM is even more fun and has some fun poses that I want to draw. I’m no musically inclined so I wonder how a shoulder keyboard stacks up as an instrument?
This is the ad used as reference (seems like there was also another variation):
and this has the CM I was talking about:
On another note, I had long had two things that I needed to do. Buy a new chair and modify my desk. My old chair I bought because it was a drafting chair which was high enough to match my desk but it was super stiff and limited the amount of comfort over the day. It was torture after a while. The desk had a rather tight entrance where I could barely come in with my chair. I put up with it since I didn’t have any arm rests, but when I finally bought my new chair, the arm rests were needed to connect the backrest to the seat. After about two weeks of use I became very aware of the lack of movement I could do, specially with the arm rests. On top of that, the right arm rest was getting scratched up (it has that fake leather), so before it became worse I had to finally address the desk.
The plan was to have the side walls point outward, and that was it. So after my other job on Sunday, I just decided to go straight into it and hack the side walls off which also house to input fans, the i/o and bluray player. Luckily it seems I had the forethought to make it easy to remove when I built the desk. Surprisingly it took me about have a day to modify the desk and get it built up (for the most part). But when I reconnected everything and turned on my computer, the screens were black…
It was already pretty late so I called it a day and would figure it out the next day. So it took me half the day to finally figure it out, the monitor switching program had forgotten all of my settings and was having problems with all five screens connected. I noticed this all before I switched my gpu to the motherboard from the stand mount. That was annoying. The next part was my drives, half of them were no longer visible. Doing most of the basic troubleshooting didn’t work. That’s when I decided to check if it was seated correctly on the motherboard. It wasn’t. The last problem left was the audio. First there was no audio and when I finally got that working, the sound was too low. As of now, I have yet to fix this. I tried resetting the drivers, updating, but nothing worked. Who would have thought that modifying the enclosure of a computer would create so many software issues. Despite everything, for only two days of work it was all worth it. I’m using a super old receiver I got from thrift store which I was planning to upgrade anyway. So I will fix the audio later. There’s some small details left, but the desk is essentially done. Though I have to figure out what do do about my lightbox which will no longer work with these new dimensions.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Here’s a quick painting of Rei Hino in the rain. It has been wanting to rain where I live, but the rain keeps going over us… At least the temps have gone down a bit.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Ahhh man, I’ve been wanting to paint Orochi Iori for a couple of years now. I seriously can’t believe it took me this long to finally do it. Looking at the gameplay animations I decided upon this pose. Having him slash there really isn’t any visual flare, but it seems in the newer games it has been added. So I decided to add a bit of flare. I thought it would look weird to have him slashing at nothing so I added some blood splatter as though he hit his target. cough cough… Kyo..
I wanted the background to fit Iori’s state, since we had a couple of rainy days where I lived I was thinking of that, or maybe a night scene. But while looking at some reference pictures I found one of a sunset that I felt would fit very well.
The Corel Painter 2023 Sargent brushes are so much better since I have more control to their thickness while also having blending abilities.
Hasta la proxima,
-Nube
Happy Birthday Airi!
I really love her solo music, I’m so glad others agree and her popularity has been increasing.
I’m quite late doing this painting but I have been quite busy lately. I also didn’t want to do a subpar painting either. I used references of her birthday pictures (from her instagram) for this painting. Her photos are always so fun. Surprisingly the balloons were not hard to paint at all. It was Airi that I felt I couldn’t get right.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I’m really loving what they are doing with the anime adaptation. Its so beautifully designed and has a lot of attention to detail when animating movements. Episode 3 made a really good job of showcasing the struggle of artist dealing with deadlines and encountering a wall (in terms of one’s current skill level). I feel that whoever is directing this anime is of course putting a lot of emphasis on the fan service aspects but also to a lot of emotional moments and the artistic aspects that comes from cosplaying and doll making. I really do feel that there is a lot of love and care put in this project.
This painting is dealing with Gojou’s comment on Marin’s beauty. The animation sequence and facial expressions were really impactful. So of course I wanted to make a painting of this moment. I really like Gojou. Most protagonists in these types of stories are a little too annoying for me. But even though Gojou has a bit of social deficiencies, he is still portrayed as what a normal person would be. That assertiveness and confidence when it comes to his craft is also quite refreshing. That’s why I believe Marin falling for Gojou is a lot more believable than other series where the protagonist has the most beautiful girl falling for him for no reason. If you haven’t given this series a try, I really recommend it. The anime is a really great addition that actually amplifies the series.
For this painting I first painted the background then Goujou and Marin. Then I added some lighting. Although it I felt it looked good, after playing around with the layers on one of the lighting layers I came upon the realization of editing the values and saturation of Marin and Goujou. The more vibrant colors I felt looked much better than the colors I had before. The background was also edited slightly to fit better with the changes. Now it looks so warm and cozy…
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
There was this photo recently uploaded by Airi Suzuki wearing a comfy looking brown sweater that I just had to draw/paint.
It was also a bonus that her hairstyle was specially cut for her end of the year °C-ute concert. I was just about finished yesterday painting Airi when my brother walked in and asked when I would make a painting that took longer. I was wondering if he meant that I was rushing through this painting and was leaving it too rough. But it seems he just meant that lately I have only been doing line art which takes only a couple of hours (Airi as well). That’s when I decided to add a background. Using the wall background would not do so I decided to make a winter scenery. I ended up mashing up a couple of reference photos (including some from Airi’s photobooks). It looks like the road crossing the train tracks is heading straight to the sea huh? I guess the idea is that there is a ramp for people to drive towards the beach.
I was a bit apprehensive about the details in the sweater when I was just about to start, but luckily with my current experience I know that it’s just a matter of painting and now stopping. Once that flow starts, it doesn’t take that long to finish. Once I added the background, I did have to tweak the saturation and values on Airi though.
I kinda wanna animate this painitng…
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I started this painting back on Saturday and worked a bit on it Sunday morning but for some reason felt like I wasn’t making much progress. It started to become a slugfest, so I decided to take the rest of Sunday off and not work on it on Monday. I felt a bit guilty but when I continued working on it today I definitely felt more refreshed and the wall I was fighting before was suddenly non existent. Although the background and the poses were mostly left finished on Sunday, there was still quite a bit of work to do figuring out how I wanted the colors for Ranma and Akane. But once I got the base colors done, the work just flowed after that. It was just a matter of working and tweaking things. I’m trying to render things a bit more so that they don’t look too rough. I’m also gonna play around with the line art digitally. Doing so I can get a my style that I’m currently developing and traditional anime working together. Judging by how things tend to work out, I’ll be adjusting and hopefully refining it as I go along.
Background is a mismatch of different ideas and photos but the ice was from a photo I took a while ago:
The idea for this painting was mainly jus to have Akane skating when I saw this photo of Yū Hayami (I of course used the opportunity to change the K to an A):
But I felt like Akane would look too lonely so I added Ranma. I remembered that he had trouble skating in the first seasons (did he ever learn?) so I wanted to paint him struggling. That’s how I came upon this pose reference (Can’t find info on the model for some reason):
Ranma’s outfit:
I was pretty much done when I suddenly by the end felt it would look even better if I had Ryoga in his boar form jumping off of Ranma. Then I noticed that Akane looked too stiff so I decided to have her hair flutter as if she was in movement.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Happy New Year!
Feliz Año Nuevo!
あけましておめでとう!
Somehow I managed to finish it on time. This is the first drawing of the year. I decided to risk it and rest a bit after work yesterday and start the first drawing/painting of the year on the very first day of the year. Usually I start a day before and finish it on the second. I wasn’t too sure what the subject would be until I noticed that people were posting tiger themed photos on instagram. The tiger is my favorite animal so this actually made ideas flow much easier.
I had the idea of riding the tiger but felt that was a bit cruel. Then I had the idea of the tiger kinda hugging me like my dog does (well except he hugs from the front) and this concept was born. I drew it first without reference to come up with the pose and whatnot. I wanted a hopeful and determined theme, with the strength of the tiger behind our backs. Or something like that. As for the background I wanted to emphasize the winter weather and used a photo that I took years ago of a street where the mountains could be seen with a beautiful sunset.
Let’s do our best this year!
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Airi recently released some photos of her as a Santa that I found both cute and fun, so I had the idea of making a painting using that idea.
I’ve been working on this painting for a couple of days now. I first drew the line art with a combination of my brush and my g pen for Airi’s base body, not including her clothes. I did this because I feel I make clothes look to stiff with the pen. For the background I used a lighter mixture of my ink while Airi herself was inked using a more concentrated ink mixture.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been playing around with the shortcut keys I feel I need most to make paintings more efficiently. I’m really glad I did because it made the painting process flow much smoother. The painting was much brighter but I feel this darker amber atmosphere fits the scene a whole lot better.
Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy Holidays! I think I’m going to take a three day break and just chill for a while. Hope you guys have a great time.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
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