I wanted to try coloring in the anime style again. This time I chose Noriko Takaya from Gun Buster. The original line art was done for inktober 2021 day 18.
For that version of the drawing I was going for a fall scene, but since we are now in these sweltering heat. I changed it to a summer scene instead. I changed Noriko’s outfit and leaf to fit the new theme.
It took almost a year, but Momochi’s Ai no Dangan drawing has been painted. I wasn’t planning on making a background but as I was working I wanted to play around with some filters and learned I could recreate a screen panel so I played around with two versions of it. At some point though I might do something else with the background.
I made the love bullet first but felt it was a bit lonely. I then played around with an aura around it which I feel fits. It also reminds me of the Spirit Gun from YuYu Hakusho.
There were a couple of things I wanted to fix first before paint it. Mainly it had to do with Misaka’s feet and posture. Misaka just looked awkward so I redrew her legs. Next I moved to her arms to give her a more interesting pose. I also wanted to have her tilting her head in a different way to give her a more confident posture. Aside from Misaka, I also made a few tweaks to Misaki and Mitsuko.
As we learned from chapter 5.5 of Astral Buddy, Misaki exercises (or at least tries to) in her apartment. Alone. For this reason I chose this setting. Just using the basic layout in the manga I decided to go with the point of view of looking towards the window. Although it was a cool idea, I wasn’t really thinking about the window at all.
So as I was painting the floor, and the wall I was feeling really good because I was doing it with no references and just instinct. But when I came to the window it finally hit me. The window has to have a reflection… For that I did have to see references to try and learn how I can make it work. So for that I started working in sections, painting over each section at a time. The base layer was just blue, then I started working with the reflections. I started with the floor then the bed which would be in front of Misaki. The second part was reflecting the rooms walls. For that I used the wall’s colors but mixing them with the blue base to get a translucence look. From there I played with lighter light transfer to emphasize the furthest part of the room to a more solid color of the wall to showcase how close the ceiling is to the window. Looking at the references online, the lights outside (in cityscapes) are quite vibrant and go through the reflections. Looking through the To Aru anime, the window lights (from the skyscrapers) are usually turquoise. The final part of the window reflections were about Misaki Shokuhou, but first I had to paint her.
I didn’t have much of a plan to paint Misaki, so I started painting her exposed body first. Whit the vase idea done, I started working on the sweat beads. Luckily I had an idea of how it looks like on surfaces thanks to the painting I did of Momochi.
The second section I painted were the shorts, luckily this was pretty straight forward. I decided to work on the shirt next because I wanted to figure out how to do it. I started with a base light warm gray and started playing around with lighter areas (the folds and shirt bumps), then for the areas that are tight on the body, I made see through to simulate the sweat. In these areas I played with the way light reflects off the wet shirt and the areas that are in the shade.
For the third section I painted the hair. With Misaki mainly painted, I started playing around with the painting and added more sweat around the body.
This time I wanted to try out making the line art more translucent (I think I put it at around 30% opacity) and adding an outline in a layer underneath with colors that correspond to each part of Misaki. I’m going to be playing around with this style more.
I went for an 80s anime painting style this time. Doing simple colors can really pop, I need to practice in more simplistic coloring styles. I have a couple of artists that I can learn from. As for this specific drawing, I want to try painting it in my style as well. That will be a future project.
The original drawing was done for Inktober 2021 day 29. I remember that I really wanted to emphasize the more round designs that Toriyama used to use back in the days, a style that much prefer. The painting really helped emphasize the curves which I love.
This painting is done using the line art I made for the first day of Inktober 2021. I kinda wanted a winter setting but the class setting kinda limited that. Even so, I really like the lighting that came from the window. I erased some sections of the lineart on Yuri but overall it was left unedited. I’ve notice another increase in speed when painting. Here’s to painting more throughout the year.
I really want to paint Tomoko in her “land mind” makeup…
For the painting of Miyabi in her maid outfit I used a couple of references for the pose, one of them happened to be of Miyabi in her outfit for the Hello Project Winter 2019 Concert. I really loved the pose, the dress and the crown working together to make Miyabi look so beautiful. This time I wanted to hatch and cross hatch. The line art itself was done with my g pen and the hatching was done with my maru pen.
Today’s painting is of King Piccolo Sr.. While I had most of the painting done, it felt a bit empty or missing something. I remembered about the variation of the thickness of lines (I keep forgetting about that…). That I feel made it look better. After thinking about it for a while I came upon the idea that I should add his hands holding a dragon ball. But since this is now younger Piccolo it wouldn’t make sense to have him holding an active Dragon Ball so I made it into a stone version of it. I finished it off by adding some static at the end.
I wanted to go for a more vibrant look. I noticed that my latest paintings looked quite washed out. My monitor settings seems to have been giving me a false sense of values and colors… I just reset all the monitors so hopefully that will help me out in the coming pieces.
Its sad, but although I worked quite a bit on the background it isn’t visible at all. I think I will reuse it for something else so that it doesn’t go to waste.