I was a bit worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish these presents in time but I was somehow able to do it. I thought I would also try out a new technique (for me) emulating Ichiro Tsuruta’s artwork that was used for the Noevir Cosmetic Renaissance ads. I would classify it as Japanese 80s Art Deco but of course I could be wrong.
Thank you for all these years of bringing happiness to your fans Sayu, I always look forward to checking out what you bring us.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I recently bought the Corel Painter 2020 upgrade. After running the brush accelerator but was bummed out that my computers’ cpu was lacking. Despite not being able to use the full potential of the program I did see an improvement. My score happened to be 5111 (if I’m remembering it correctly). Looking at parts to upgrade my pc will come to be quite expensive if I want it to last me a couple of years so that’s probably something I will aim to do next year. Anyway despite that it was definitely smoother. So far I have only tested the oily bristle brush, I know I had problems with watercolors with Corel 2018 so I will try that out next time.
For the first painting I have done with this version of Painter I decided to do another painting of Sayu. Wasn’t too sure what style I would be painting her in but I ended up with this one, somewhat realistic, somewhat animeish. I wanted it to be simplistic and yet have a good amount of color. I also wanted to start off some spring paintings. It’s funny the year I decide to finally star making seasonal painting we all get stuck inside. I used a photo from her instagram as a reference, but I decided to have her pointing Tokyo sky tree.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
This was a second try at using Hiros’ ( siiteiebahiro ) style. I wanted to try painting it with Copics and then give it another try digitally with Corel Painter. I used a picture from Sayu’s Instagram as a reference then modified it to have her holding a Pokeball (it’s the third photo in this post).
Awesome, seems like I can post Instagram posts here directly!
Here is are my attempts:
This is the version done using Copic markers.
I used the fully inked drawing from above and faded it so that I could digitally paint over it. I debated over what to put in the background but decided to keep it simple and practice merging the focal point and the background together at some point in the future.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Time is flying by quite fast. Looking back I have been quite busy this year. I’ve also invested in more art supplies. They were definitely worth it, I just hope I have more of a chance to practice using them on this new year. Luckily I have taken cared of the hardest and most time consuming parts left for this year. So fingers crossed that I’ll have more time to create and experiment on new art pieces.
I somehow managed to make it through Inktober despite it all. I think I have gotten a bit quicker when drawing. I’ve also noticed that I can make poses from my mind and it also happens to be much faster. I do have to work more on color though. so I will be using some of the ink drawings and coloring them.
Here is a piece I drew just for today.
And I will begin uploading the latest pieces I have been working on over the past year.
I’ll start with a drawing I did of Sayumi as a pokemon trainer. I first drew it then after I scanned it I printed different copies so that I could try out different styles. This one was done with Copics using Hiro’s ( siiteiebahiro ) style.
Originally drawn on 6/6/19 and painted on 6/11/19.
Feliz Dia de los Muertos.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
Finally the last day of Inktober. I somehow managed to make it through. Yesterday I showed “The Mummy” movie from 99 to my brother who hadn’t seen it yet. I then came up with the idea of the mummy being afraid of Sayumi and Momoko doing cat gestures and saving me before being consumed. I want to redraw it when I have more time.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I was looking into Clip Studio after I saw a video showcasing the ability to have the program auto color one’s line art. And what made it cool was that not only did it seem to work great but one can have a say on the colors used as well. I couldn’t try it out since the trial version doesn’t make it accessible. But there is a website that does the same thing named PaintsChainer so I played around with that for a bit. While I was reading more about Clip Studio I happened to hear about another program that was open source and free named Krita. I have heard of this program before (quite a while ago) but never gave it a chance. So I decided to finally give it a chance. I’m amazed at the amount of tools and options it has. It really does seem to offer (at least from what I have tried so far) everything most pro programs offer.
One other reason I was interested in using Krita is because Photoshop seems to make my tablet drivers quite after working on it for a while, and the only way to make them work again is to restart my pc. What sucks is that sometimes I only make a couple of strokes and the drivers quit on me. This makes working digitally really annoying, time consuming and messes with my work rhythm. Now to be fair I did have too many open tabs on chrome so I’m sure that was causing my pc to use too much memory causing problems.
In any case I’m glad this all culminated in me trying out this program because it’s quite amazing. It has many pen options and works quite well. Most things work like in any other painting program so making the change isn’t hard. I really like the g-pen to draw. One thing I’ve never tried was using the pen pressure to dictate the opacity. I’ts actually quite amazing and intuitive. I think I might prefer using the pen pressure in this way instead of controlling the size of the brush while painting. It gives me a feel that reminds me of how watercolor works.
I’m still not used to the way to color selector works, I prefer the one from Corel and Photoshop (the Coolorus addon one).
As for the drawing it self I wasn’t too sure what to draw so I just began doodling until at some point I decided to draw Sayu. This time though I just wanted to see what would come up if I just did things from memory and imagination. After doing the line art I decided to try out painting with the program and am quite surprised and pleased at how great it feels and works. I highly recommend it specially since it’s free. I’ll see how far I can push the program in some future works. Hopefully my tablet drivers will finally stop crashing as well so I can just draw and paint at my pace without disturbances.
The 1st drawing/painting:
The process:
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
By the end of last year I bought a lot of art supplies which included new brushes, a ceramic watercolor palette well and of course the titled Arches cold press cotton paper. But I decided to use them at the time that I created my first cotton paper painting. They are quite expensive so I was a bit weary about using them. I painted all of my mistakes on the old cheaper Canson paper so I figured that I should be ready now that I understand what does and doesn’t work.
So of course I chose Sayu as my first subject. I chose a photo from her Instagram, seems like it was from a photoshoot.
I guess I should mention that I am now finally using my Instagram. What’s great about Instagram is that I can upload sketches and unfinished artwork. So I’ll probably be updating things there more often than here, obviously with less in depth details and pictures about the process.
I decided to play around with the aspects that are unique with watercolors making Sayu the main focus and then fading away as I moved to the edges. After looking at what other artist can do, it seems like I can push things further by using other mediums like color pencils to make certain areas finer/smoother and to control the values. But I want to practice that a bit before I do it on cotton paper.
Here is the final piece:
This is the reference picture:
And here is the process:
I actually quite enjoyed using cotton paper. It has more versatility than paper. It retains more water, paint and it also doesn’t start peeling off after a couple of layers. Although it still bowed by the end, it does react better than normal paper. Next time I will tape it down. I saw this painter on Youtube (named: Watercolor by Shibasaki ). He shows his skills doing just that in this video. where he paints without having the paper bow. I’ll have to work on that.
Now as for the porcelain palette well, I love it. It works much better than the plastic one I had before. It’s set up in a circular shape where I can have 6 different color and a center area to mix up colors. On top of that It’s much easier to clean up.
As for the brushes, I decided to buy some higher quality brushes. Cheap ones are okay but their bristles fall off and also they are also too limp when wet so it’s hard to control the brush.
That should be all for now.
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
So there have been some changes to Flickr and it seems like they will limit the amount of photos one can have in one’s account for free to 1,000. And I had almost 2,000. So I had the option to either delete some photos my self or have Flickr delete the first 1,000 photos. So some posts will have photos missing as of now. If you guys want any of the missing photos from those old post let me know and I will go back and fix them.
Because of that I had to find another site that I could use and that would not have a size limitation. I thought I got lucky and would be able to use Google photos but it seems like WordPress would have to download the photos and it would count towards my storage space so that wouldn’t solve the problem…
So I looked at the sites that would allow me to embed photos here easily and would not have a size limit. Begrudgingly it seems like I will have to use Facebook. A site I’m not too fond of… But I need it so I guess I will have to revive the old DarkCloud XERO Facebook page.
With that said and out of the way here is the new piece. I actually finished this on November 3rd. but decided to hold it off so I can space my artwork during the week. This piece is based from the previews that Sayumi has been posting on her Instagram for her new single “Loneliness Tokyo”. I took a screenshot and used that as a reference.
This is the painting:
Reference used:
It seems like I can post the whole gallery in one click so that’s cool. But it seems like to view it, it will take you to Facebook so I hope that won’t be a problem for you guys.:
I quite enjoyed making this painting. I started working on it on October 8th but had to wait till I finished Inktober. When I did come back to it I was surprised by how much easier it felt to paint her compared to when I first started a month before.
Congratulations on the new single Sayu! ₊·(ϱ॔⌄ᵕ๑॓)‧*
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
I first heard about Inktober last year. I wasn’t really planing on joining in this year but after thinking about it, it should be a good way to practice my drawing and inking techniques.
What I understood about Inktober is that one should not only draw only using ink and a pen, but that one should not use anything else. So no rough drafting, just drawing with the pen and working with the mistakes that happens as one goes along.
For the my first drawing I of course drew Sayumi Michishige. I seem to be able to draw rather fast… or at least it seemed fast, I feel that those countless hours I spend investing on my drawing skills have been paying off.
This is the reference I used from her book “Sayu: Sayumi Michishige Personal Book”:
This is the process for those who are interested.
If you look to the right at Sayu’s left elbow you can see a big blotch of ink. That was a careless mistake I made where I ran my hand over it while the ink was still wet. Nothing I can do except keep going.
Oh, before I forget. I used a brush pen and this other pen to ink the boots. Forgot to take a photo of them with the dip pen.
I’ll try to draw one drawing everyday for Halloween, and also do some of the other artwork… it’s going to be a rather busy month.
In any case, that should be all,
Hasta la proxima,
-NUBE
A very quick drawing for this years Halloween. Hope you guys had a great day.
I like the idea so I might make a better version (though that might be more for me…)
Hasta la proxima,
NUBE Booooo!
It’s not a finished drawing, but it will be the foundation for this years work. I’m surprised at how much I can do without references these days… my skills have definitely been improving, here’s hoping I can go even further. In any case, can you tell what this drawing is about, and who is in it? It’s only a rough draft right now, but it definitely captures my feelings and thoughts quite well. Since it’s so rough you guys might have a hard time seeing some things, but it is vivid inside of my head. It’s strange, I get all warm and fuzzy every time I see it, I just can’t help but smile…
The hardest part is to get the poses it seems… I have been wanting to do a piece for quite a while now, but I just couldn’t come up with a good concept. But now I feel really confident in making my art subjects do what I envision with out the need of references. Studying the way human bodies look and move has really helped. Every time I can I try to pay attention to the way a body looks and does things. I have much to learn of course, but it has made it easier to make movements/poses that make sense in an art piece. That is what I wish to impart in this drawing. Of course I will be using references to help make the drawing more lifelike. But that will be mainly focused on facial expressions and whatnot. This rough draft still needs a bit more teaks before I start adding more details. I want everyone to be “connected”. There’s three “connections” I need to make. I just have to think about it carefully so that it looks natural.
This drawing will be advanced as I see my skills up to par with what I have in mind… I get chills just thinking of me getting to that level…
Anyway this is a year round project, so I will be putting most of my effort on commissions and other projects. Right now I will be working on the three commissions I have at the moment and also work on the Star wars drawing I started last year (feels weird saying it).
So far this year has gotten off to a great start. Here’s hoping to make it better!
Ashita Mañana.
-XERO
Man, no matter how much I tried I was just not able to continue posting (finals and other things have been piling up quite badly, but I will be done this week). But that does not mean that I wasn’t thinking about what I should be doing. It’s obvious that many of my drawing videos have not being doing too great. Mainly of course because I have not maintained consistency which is of utmost importance, but also because I have not been doing what people actually want to see. It seems that for most videos, specially those with minor movements and whatnot need to have commentary to have people drawn in. Also this helps viewers have a connection to the creator. I knew this before of course, but I wanted to test out if I could break free from those restrictions. The end result was mixed, some got quite a few views while others were abysmal (which sucks because the drawing it self was rather good). Another reason was because of the background noise that would appear. So my original plan was to buy a good microphone, but that would take too long, and it wouldn’t be good to invest in something that would not guaranteed results. So I will be using my phone instead which surprisingly has a good microphone built in. And luckily there are plenty of freeware audio editing software to edit the recordings if needed. So when I finally come back, that will be what I will be doing with my videos from now on. Whatever the reasons I would like to apologize for disappearing yet again, I can’t control the outcome of events to come, but I will do my utmost to overcome them whatever they may be. Specially since summer vacation is finally here.
Now for my other plans… my main channel will now be taking requests again. I’d say I had enough time to draw what I liked, so it’s time to give back to others. One difference is that I’m thinking of giving the artwork away, but I have not thought out the specifics yet so more on that later. My other channel darkcloudxero.extended will be used to answer questions (that I do not do in my main channel) and talking about any other things regarding art or anything in general.
One third thing, I would like to create one third channel, this one will be used for myself mainly. If you have been following me lately, than you know that I really like Morning Musume … well sort of. What I really like is the time between 2007-2010, what I and many other fans of that time like to refer to as the Platinum Era. There I will be doing different types of videos regarding that specific formation. It’s kind of funny how 4 years have passed now, and I am still thinking about them nonstop. It’s crazy in a way. But that’s how influential they have been in my life so I will be supporting them for as long as I can. Specially now that that last remaining member of that Era Michishige Sayumi is leaving (and in a grand way might I add). The sad thing is that the Platinum Era is being blamed for their popularity drop even more so now that the current Morning Musume has gained a lot of popularity lately. So I will be giving my own opinions on that and everything else in the channel mentioned before.
On a side note, it has been raining nonstop where I live. Some people don’t seem to like the rain, but I love it. And now it has me in a nostalgic mood.
Till next time,
-XERO
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