October has finally arrived, and that means that Inktober has as well. I had some ideas on the past days but just yesterday I had an idea of Goku kicking me in the back sending me flying like in a gag manga. I thought the idea fit this year and the start of this Inktober quite well. I wanted a simple style much like the one used in the original Dragon Ball. Once I was done I was tempted to add more details, but I really have to contain my tendency to overwork pieces. I think this will be a good starting piece, I’ll try new ink styles over the coming days.
Ahh finally, my favorite season has begun. Some days have already started to have lower temperatures but it’s still fluctuating quite a bit. Any way, things have been quite busy lately so I just made a quick painting to commomerate fall. Although I wish to make more. Oh wait Inktober starts tomorrow. I guess my time will be taken over by that for a month. The painting is a study of this photo of Sayu: https://www.instagram.com/p/CFE1mDOlsl4/
It’s been a while since I last painted with watercolors. Truth be told, I was really afraid to go at it. But after looking at a couple of pictures from one of my favorite artists, it gave me that push to just start painting. The artist I’m talking about (and that I have mentioned before a couple of times) is Little Thunder. If you haven’t seen her work I really suggest you go and check it out. It’s absolutely beautiful and definitely one of my artistic inspirations. I tend to overwork my paintings and not use color theory to my advantage. I still don’t fully comprehend it but I do know when colors look right when used with each other, so I have at least developed my color abilities to that level. Having said that, I still was guided by Little Thunder’s artwork as I painted.
I really like Japanese 80s music, and one of my favorite artists during that time is Naoko Kawai. Her voice and music are amazing and brings me joy when I listen to it. On top of that she is super cute. So of course I would do another piece of her. This time I wanted to try something a bit more difficult that had various variables, and well I just plain liked the photo of her in the Jeep. I was surprised I was able to finish the painting so fast. It was three days, (a few hours on Wednesday for the rough draft, Thursday I finished the rough draft and focused on inking, I then got all my courage and actually started painting today Friday). I really love the way watercolors look. It changes my art style quite a bit. I’m planning to do more paintings but October is coming so that means Inktober, plus I need to write three essays… It’s gonna be a rough month. But I’ll give it a shot. I was amazed when I saw Little Thunder finished a drawing/painting in 15 minutes. That’s a good goal to aim for.
Right now I’m in a Hello Project art mood, I can’t help but want to draw the members whenever I want to try out a new style. But I figured I should try to draw some new subjects, so I was looking through my reference folders and decided on drawing a Honda CR-X which I quite like. Once I had the line art done I decided to try out a new shading style which consists of just laying it down with parallel lines. I quite liked the aesthetic of this style. But once I was done I wasn’t too sure what else I should do with it. Then I started thinking about maybe implementing someone in front of the car. Then it hit me, I could use that Sayu picture I drew where she has short hair. Once I cleaned up the background I resized Sayu so that she would fit the size of the CR-X and well… I really love the way it came out. I guess things were just meant to be. Somehow that short hair and hat make her fit that racer look.
This is a study from Momoko’s photobook Momoko Momochi Zukan. I actually wanted to try something new but ended up trying to do a realistic take by using hatching and cross hatching. I wasn’t satisfied with the way it came out since some lines came out too thick for the shadows. But I figured if I thickened some of the line art and darkened certain areas to change the values and lighten the hatching I made for the shadows. And sure enough it worked. I could push this effect more if I added more shadows around Momochi. Maybe adding interesting hatching would give it a cool aesthetic.
Today was a busy day but I somehow was still be able to draw, ink and edit this piece with photoshop. I wanted to give the ink style of the previously uploaded drawing again. But this time five times. Today (yesterday in Japan) was ℃-ute’s Day. So that is the reason I drew this drawing. Thank you ℃-ute for all the years you’ve given us.
I had drawn this back in I believe June 3rd of this year. Back then I had no idea of how to color it. I did at some point wanted to make it with gray tones but couldn’t figure it out. Today on my Youtube recommended’s list was a video featuring the art of tourniiquet, this one here.
After seeing it I decided to give it another try. I liked the way it turned out but wanted to add more contrast and texture somewhere so I eventually ended up using some paper texture for the background. I really like the way it came out.
I attempted doing an ink drawing of Sayu with her short hair back in 2018 for inktober but wasn’t satisfied with the end result, so I decided to draw her again. This time I used a combination of both ink and digital hatching and some small manipulations to the diamonds below the table which were done in the wrong perspective.
Really love the way short hair compliments Sayumi.
I’ve been doing a couple of paintings these last two days but I won’t be showcasing them till a couple of days later. In the meantime I decided to make a simple and quick drawing. At first I was of doing it completely with ink but ended up doing it with a combination of both. Although I’m sure I could have done a lot more interesting effects I wanted to emulate a smooth color coverage.
As for the reference picture I used, surprisingly I came up with the idea of drawing Metal Bat (one of my favorite S rank members) when I was looking through one of my 80s reference folders. I came upon an ad for the Be-Bop Highschool movie poster. If you look at of the actors named Tōru Nakamura, he looks a lot like Metal Bat. I seriously wouldn’t be surprised if he was based off of the actors image in the movie. Which you can look at here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2691/7222/products/12933_abd05aff-36ce-4d72-84be-65e945c0d7da_1024x1024.jpg?v=1584502254
Are you a bad enough dude to join the Red Ribbon Army? This has been an idea I’ve had for a couple of months now. Originally I planned on having all the main players of the Red Ribbon Army present in the poster showcasing the different locations one could be stationed at around the world but after drawing out a rough draft I felt it was too busy so I went for a more simplistic one containing Commander Red and Staff Sergeant Black. I figured it would be fun to play around with the idea of the painting done in episode 50 of the anime where Black was shortened and Red was taller and had a more rustic and wise appearance. I then wanted to copy the look of the old War World II recruitment posters. The text in the black box is from the Red Ribbon Army theme song. Line work done with one of my diluted inks and using my Holbein watercolors.
Just to change it up a bit let’s draw a guy this time, and let’s try a new angle (as advised by my younger brother). For this drawing I decided try out a new technique I saw a couple of years ago. This I believe is what they call foreshortening. It worked amazingly well so that I could draw out Luffy’s arm and finger pointing at us. When I finished drawing I then shaded the drawing by using ink and brush. Now Luffy is ready to move forward and become the king of the pirates.
I wanted to try working with the more simplistic style again today. For my model I chose Momoko Tsugunaga and while looking for some reference pictures I came upon some where she was cosplaying as Rei Ayanami. Which in turn just turned into Rei Ayanami in the end. I don’t have enough blues in my collection of Copics so I’m a bit bummed that I wasn’t able to do much with her blue hair. Looking at my drawing there are still traces of Momochi which I like. At first I had Rei smiling but decided against it. The end result gives her an expression of noticing the viewer and glancing over.
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