Today’s Pixiv theme is “idol” so why not draw and paint the eternal idol Lynn Minmay from Macross. It’s funny, while looking for references for the pose I would use to draw Minmay. I came upon a photo of Naoko Kawai wearing almost the exact same clothes that Minmay used in “Do you Remember Love”.
This time I used inspiration from a photo of Rie Hatada’s single cover. When I saw the color scheme it reminded me of Athena. As for the art style, this time I wanted to use Masakazu Katsura’s (artist of Video Girl Ai). I really like the fusion of realism and the manga illustration style.
I’ve been wanting to do some pixel art for a couple of months now… I recently got reminded again of ThorHighHeels video about the PC98 art style. I have an idea for a piece that I will be working on soon. For the first test I made a new Sayu piece using a photo from her instagram. It seems like there is a way to do pixel art using Photoshop but I would have to change quite a number of the settings so looked for other alternatives. Eventually I came upon Pro Motion which luckily has a free version. It seems that if I were to get a full version I would gain the ability to animate my art, but that will have to wait. After finishing this piece which surprisingly didn’t take too much time I exported the picture as a PNG. The resolution was of course tiny (64 pixels by 64 pixels). I figured I could just enlarge the piece with Photoshop. It worked quite well.
It’s actually been a couple of years since I last used color pencils. I actually had bought two different types of color pencil sets before I guess I decided to move over to Copics. Now understanding colors more, but being out of practice with color pencils I was curious to see if I could even use them.
So for this drawing I used the Faber-Castell Pastel pencils >>Pitt<<. They are quite amazing, they apply to the paper quite easily and spread out quite evenly. But they also smeared quite easily and were quite chalky. Plus they didn’t really like getting layered. But if I planned things out correctly they worked out quite well. I like them, but they smear far too easily.
I recently saw a video of this other artist using photoshop’s color balance ability to change the color of a black and white painting. So I wanted to try it out. I’ve been craving to do another Momoko art piece so I used this chance to do so. I first painted Momoko using ink and my brushes. When I was content with the final painting I then went ahead and tried out this method. It definitely works, although maybe my painting wasn’t defined as well since some sections were too light and I had to add some more layers to get the right values. Overall I’m quite impressed, although I much prefer to just paint in colors right from the start so I can learn the process better for when I make future paintings later on. But at least now I know new technique just in case.
You can see both versions if you click on either pixiv or twitter.
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.
I had attempted to draw this and paint this for New Years but I didn’t really like the way it came out. So I attempted it again, but since I had already painted the original lineart I had no choice but to go at it digitally. I would say that the painting process isn’t taking that much time, but getting references does. I decided to use the coloring style from the movie Macross: Do you remember love. Aside from coloring it I also wanted to edit some other parts of the drawing it self. The first part was the mouth and lips. I decided to take out the linework of the upper and lower lip. I would form it wit color instead. Of course this and all the other changes were dictated by the references I got from the movie. For the mouth, I also resized it and made it smaller while also repositioning it. The Eyes were moved down a bit and I erased most of the eyelash strands. Eyelashes were also thined and shortened a bit. To my surprise, when I was screen capturing the final reference shots I came across a scene that is almost the same background like the Airi Suzuki picture that I’m using. I quite like the addition of the shadow. I feel like I could’ve added something on the left side of the painting. But this works. One thing I do know is that it looks quite good using a diluted ink linework so that the color influences it when applied.
Originally I was planning on ending this year round project by drawing Ai last but things didn’t turn out that way. But, in a way I am glad that it happened this way. After all Gaki was an important member of the group that sadly many seem to overlook. Her voice is definitely powerful but can also be tuned to sound extremely cute. Her versatility is quite astonishing. I felt that as a whole, the two main vocalists (Ai and Reina) needed someone to fill in the places where their weaknesses might reside. And that is where Gaki came in. She filled in the really deep parts that others couldn’t, and she did it extraordinarily.
When I first saw and heard her in Mikan I was quite amazed at how deep a voice she had. I had never really seen a group with so many different voice ranges before so hearing her singing voice was a surprise to me at the time. It soon became clear to me how vital her voice was to the group. This variations of voices are what really makes the Platinum Era so special. When hearing their songs, you could immediately tell who was who. And not only that but almost everyone had a really good voice (Koharu definitely had the weakest, and although it pains me to say this but so did Sayu but she can sing quite well when she puts all her effort into the song).
One of the reasons I am glad that I got to draw Gaki last is because she really seemed to be the member that loved Morning Musume the most out of all the members. I remember how she would like to talk about that whenever they asked why she joined, and also how she would boast of her collection of Morning Musume member postcards (is that what they are called?). She really seemed to care for the group. So much so that she gave up on her idea to leave alongside Ai (I do wonder if the gokkies all promised to graduate together? That didn’t happen of course, after Asami and later Makoto left, but still. That was the kind of vibe I got since they were all so close), to teach the newcomers for one year until finally deciding to graduate herself.
One thing I always remember was an episode of Yorosen where Gaki was the teacher and asked the members to write a letter to themselves, I believe it was 10 years later. Out of all them she was the only one to speak of Morning Musume. And not only that but she believed that they would still be in the group. What was most touching was that she was talking about the Platinum Era, not any other members. Hearing that just made me so happy. It just makes me very pleased when these members all speak so well of this lineup. Not the Golden Era, and not the colorful era (I believe that’s what the fans are calling them), but the Platinum Era. She isn’t the only one of course. I remember reading a interview with Ai where she felt that this lineup would be the ones to take Morning Musume to new heights for years to come, but then came the graduations that shook that thought. Then there were the comments of Reina in a recent interview? where she said she had wished that the Platinum Era was just as popular as Morning Musume is now.
Some day, some how I will reunite them all. I don’t know how, but I hope to show the world just how amazing they all are together, this legendary group that sadly was way to underrated.
This concludes my year long project. I probably won’t be doing any more Morning Musume drawings (on youtube). But I will go back to my old schedule of anime and manga drawings very soon.
Let me start off by saying, that just like JunJun’s mother I seemed to have messed up JunJun’s birthday by a whole month… (yeah, really smooth…) But better late than never, and in a way this is kind of like her Morning Musume birthday (yeah, I’m just making excuses now). Now back to the description.
JunJun is one of the only two foreign members on Morning Musume (would that also include all of Hello! Project ???). I really feel she along with LinLin had it tough. For one, they both had to master a new language, adapt to a new culture away from their families, go through the difficulties of adjusting to the hardships that come from being a Momusu (learning how to; sing, dance etc), and to top it all off, also trying their best to over come and tolerate some of the hate that came from some of the racist fans. Truly a lot of hardships. It really is easy for one to not pay attention to such details, specially when some girls from outside of Japan would do anything to join Morning Musume.
Although her time in the group was short, I’d say she did make quite an impression on a lot of people. I really cannot say what the full plan was when Tsunku decided to incorporate two members from China. He kept saying things along the lines of expanding to Asia. But I wonder if he also had some other plans to go along with it? I wonder if in some way he was trying to change the image that people had of Japan out in the Mainland? Whenever I start reading about Japan, people always seem to make them out to be as racists who think of themselves as more than (or above) the rest of the people on their continent. All I have to say is that like in many countries (if not all), there will always be racists. It just seems to be a very sad truth about humans. But what people just don’t seem to understand is that just because there appears to be a large group of people who speak of hate to other countries and/or ethnicities, you should not group a whole country as if it is filled with these types of people. In many cases (if not all) the groups are actually very small, but they appear to be big because they just happen to be the loudest (in other words they are big loudmouths). It is these types of groups of people that ruin the reputation of people that can range from a small group to a whole country. I should know, there are a lot of these types of people in my home country of Mexico. A beautiful place filled with really nice people, but there always happens to be some idiot who ruins the image for everyone.
Kind of off topic again… In any case I found her to be a hard worker, who tried her best to get incorporated into the group. She also seemed to be a really funny person from what I saw on Haro!Moni (too bad it ended so soon).
Now that she has moved back to China I noticed that she has gotten far too thin. When in Morning Musume she was already thin to begin with, but looked really healthy. Now she seems so fragile. She’s also not the only one, it seems that Ogawa Makoto has also slimmed even further, and just like JunJun, she seems extremely frail. Maybe this was the reason Hello!Morning and Haro!Moni always seemed to incorporate food into the show. Like most man I do prefer a women who is in shape, but there really is a thing as too thin.
I also hear that she now has a boyfriend (one of the perks of graduating from Morning Musume). I’m happy to hear that. I think she is the first of the Platinum Era.
Request by: DOGChels
And so this the second installment of the Luo Tianyi video… “In Color!” I recently obtained a set of 50 color pencils so my array of colors has grown a bit (finally). I am still unpleased with the way my coloring comes out. The time I borrowed my skills from Banpai Akira the drawing came out amazingly good, but I still have not been able to replicate it on my own. This time I tried to use a different style (that is a bit more plain but is much easier to use). Despite that I feel it needs a bit more effort. I’ll keep making more videos but I want to try to master my coloring style so that it comes out flawlessly. I hope you guys will come with me on this adventure to master the “color”.
Request by: DOGChels
This is the design for the winning entry for the very first Chinese Vocaloid. I seriously like it. Hmmm, it seems that I made the skirt a little too long… but hopefully you guys won’t mind?
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