Susuki Airi Red Hat

I’ve been wanting to make an all ink drawing for a while now. This time I chose to draw Airi Suzuki. It’s a shame I got into ℃-ute (and Berryz Koubou) a little late to the party. I listened to a couple of their songs back in the day but never really delved into all their projects. On the plus side I have plenty of new material that will be new to me. I’m really glad Airi decided to continue singing after ℃-ute retired. I wont lie out of all the ℃-ute members Airi captured my attention the most (although everyone is winning me over when I started checking their songs and videos out, but I still think Airi is my favorite).

One artist that gave me the final push to finally draw this piece is ungrochika an artist that focuses on making art with ink. Her art is quite beautiful do check it out.

here is her twitter

and her instagram

Not only is she an artist but she is also a DJ (and to top it off she is extremely cute too), do check her out.

Here is the final piece:

reference used (and a piece by ungrochika that guided me a bit). I don’t know where the photo of Airi is from, if you know do let me know.:

and the process:

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

March 12, 2019 0

Inktober 2018 #29 Mimikyu

I know that a lot of people think that the Pikachu-Like Pokemons are lazy but I really like this Mimikyu design. Having such a gloomy Pokemon that feels it has to hide his true identity with a Pikachu costume is quite amusing for me. It really makes one feel for Mimikyu. That whole segment of the game was one of my favorite story-lines of the game actually.

Reference pictures:

Process:

Hope you guys like it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 29, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #27 Berserker Armor

I’ve been mesmerized by Miura’s artwork when I finally decided to read it I think two years ago. Truth is that I probably would never have given his work a chance if not for my brother. I’ve seen covers and anime previews about Berserk but the promotional videos made it look like a generic anime about a guy that created a lot of bloodshed and gore. And it’s not that the series doesn’t contain this imagery but it is so much more. In short it is a masterpiece. (ﾉ^ヮ^)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧

The protagonist Guts has so much tribulations and yet despite it all he continues to fight, though more importantly… live.

One of the cool additions to Berserk was the addition of the Berserker Armor. The way it can amplify his ability to fight beings far beyond humans capabilities but at the cost of his body is such an amazing idea. Dragon ball did this back in the 90s with Goku’s Kaoiken but since Toriyama was forced to continue writing all of that was thrown out the window with the Super Sayajin transformation. I really feel that the idea of having to think whether sacrificing ones body would be a good idea or not was a really interesting concept that would have made Dragon Ball Z better. Luckily Miura used this concept in a very interesting way that really makes one feel every fight that Guts has to go through with a lot of anticipation and excitement. If you haven’t given this series a shot please do. Just make sure you are of age since it has a lot of mature themes.

For this drawing I used three different pens. I used the G pen, the felt tip and the brush to paint the cape and the lower body. I was quite surprised that I was able to do everything that I was imagining quite easily. I was worried that I would have had to do Guts cape with my G pen. Thankfully I didn’t have to. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°

These are the references used:

And here is the process:

And with that I end the day… （⌒▽⌒ゞ

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 27, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #25 Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong

Recently I have been remembering my time playing Donkey Kong Country back in the day. Of course the main thing I remember aside from the beautiful visuals was the music. I’ve been listening to the soundtrack since the summer. So I decided make a piece for them. I messed up Diddy Kongs star shirt and shaded the inner star… (＠￣Д￣＠；)

I do feel like making another piece for Donkey Kong some time in the future, but this will do for now.

Reference pictures:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/43755624250/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/31700448158/in/dateposted-public/

Here is the process:

That will be all.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 25, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #22 Michishige Sayumi Sports Festival

This time I decided to once again give the maru nib a try again. I looked up information on the net but it seems like a stiff nib is normal when they are new so I used some paper to make some lines and see if I could make the ink flow. It started flowing but it’s so small that the ink is a bit of a pain to make work. I made a small and quick drawing of Sayu doing the Usa-chan Peace. With the maru nib releasing ink I decided to finally do the drawing.

This is a picture from the Sports Festivals that Hello Project used to do back in the day. Those days sure were filled with a lot of fun events. Sad they ended by the time the Platinum Era was around… (︶︹︺)

In any case, although the maru nib gave me problems as I went along it did work remarkably. It allows me to make subtle shading quite easily and more precisely (when it decides to work).

Man… so freakin cute… ⸌̷̻( ᷇ॢ〰ॢ ᷆◍)⸌̷̻♡⃛

Here is the reference picture:

And here is the process:

Personally I loved the way the drawing came out. ◝( ′ㅂ`)و ̑̑

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 22, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #21 Michishige Sayumi Short Hair

A while ago now (wow 4 years ago ∑(ﾟﾛﾟ〃)) Sayumi was rumored to have cut her hair short which was a big deal since she had always had her beautiful long and natural hair colored hair. As it turns out it was I believe a wig where Sayu and the other Momosu members had different hairstyles that they didn’t use.

And man let me tell you, she looked absolutely amazing. I was surprised by how short they decided to go with the hairstyle but it fit her really well.

For this piece I had decided to give the maru pen nib a try but it was so small and stiff so I couldn’t really get it to work. I had no choice but to give up since it was getting really late. In the end I used my G nib and some of my other pens. It went well for the most part but I feel I messed a bit on her chin and lower head. I could have played a bit more with the values and I’m pretty sure it would look much better. But overall I liked the way the piece turned out.

Here is the reference picture used:

I really want to give it another shot and do another one traditionally.

Here is the process:

That’s it for now.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 21, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #20 Breakable bottle

I came out of work late this day and had a meetup with an old high school friend I hadn’t seen in a long time so since I would be short on time I decided to take my sketchbook so I could make a drawing while we hanged out. We got some Topo Sabores (a Mexican soda) and saw that as a good fit for the prompt breakable.

Forgot to take a reference picture and pictures of the bottles online look really different so none this time.

Here is the process (even though I didn’t really take more than two pictures):

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 20, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #19 Scorched Shin Gojira

Shin Gojira. I wasn’t too sure about the design and the movie itself when I started seeing the first images. And when I saw the film for the first time I was feeling contradicting thoughts since it was such a different take from the Godzilla we all knew up to that point. But after seeing it a second time I really loved it. And I kept liking it even more the more times that I saw it. I really loved that scene where we first saw it make his first atomic breath. The way it transitioned from smoke, then to fire and then to his condensed atomic breath was truly a sight and moment that really touched me. With that in mind, I chose that scene for the scorched prompt.

I’m actually I was able to do exactly what I wanted in this piece. I used the brush tip cover large areas and was able to control the values and textures. I made the fire with rough and irregular lines yet it somehow managed to still look good…

Here is the reference used:

And here is the process.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 19, 2018 0

Inktober #5 – Takahashi Ai

By now it’s obvious that I am a big fan of Morning Musume, specifically the Platinum Era (don’t really keep up with the new generations after my favorite members left). So since it was the 5th day of October I decided to choose a 5th generation member, and of course it would have to be Takahashi Ai who really made me want to learn more about Morning Musume. I was in high school when I came across this Japanese music video of a group of girls singing. I didn’t know who they were but they captured my interest right away. There voices were all different from each other and the music was really energetic. The girls themselves were incredibly cute but there was one member who just captured my attention. She had short hair, a beautiful smile and a voice that left me amazed and wanting more. I chose this drawing based on the scene that really stuck out and I had in my mind whenever I thought about Mikan.

Prior to this I wasn’t really interested in Idols, but this MV really changed my perspective and for a time really got me involved in the world of idols which made me see their struggles, work ethic, and triumphs. I’d say it had a big impact in my life. Whenever I went to a place like the summit of a mountain or of the tallest sand dune after the struggle to hike up it I had this urge to just play and listen to Mikan while I rested atop that accomplishment thinking, “I did it”. (Does this even make sense?)

Sadly I was super busy so I started drawing this piece really late at night and ran out of time. That was a mistake because I decided to use some brush pens that I forgot I had for … well some years now I guess. They are the Koi Coloring brush pen set from Sakura. This set contains three different values of cool grey and three of warm grey. One thing I should have done was to choose to use either the cool or the warm but not both.

Seeing as I was low on time, maybe I should have left it like this. Or went with the hatching technique to add shadows.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690015/in/dateposted-public/

But once I added these black areas the values changed dramatically so I had to continue. Plus I was intent on giving these brush pens a try.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216689935/in/dateposted-public/

It’s going alright but really rough and unfinished/ weird, I just had to keep pushing it even further.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216689915/in/dateposted-public/

So I added more shadows… But, well it’s just unfinished. I ran out of time, in a few minutes it would be the 6th of October and I had to go to sleep as well. So with that I had to call it quits and this is what I ended up with. It’s so close to being finished and looking right, and yet it isn’t. Because I added these shadows I changed the values quite a bit, thinking now I could fix it by adding darker values in other areas to lighten the shadows on Ai’s face. I will leave it like this since I believe it is in the spirit of this challenge to live with the difficulties and mistakes one makes along the way.

One other that could have helped was to make thicker lines in certain areas to make the areas that I wanted to appear lighter, well, lighter.

Here is the reference I used. I took a screen grab from the MV Mikan:

Here is the process for those who are interested:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690665/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690625/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690585/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690495/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690455/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690405/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690265/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690195/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690135/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690085/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690055/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216690015/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44407756054/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216689935/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44216689915/in/dateposted-public/

That should be all for now.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 5, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #4 Double Feature – Asuka and Rei

I wasn’t really sure what to draw, but my brother let me know that October 4th is Evangelion’s 23rd anniversary which is why I decided to draw Asuka and Rei.

These are the final drawings. I was planning on only drawing Asuka, but decided to draw Rei as well. After all she was one of the reasons I first decided to watch Evangelion. More on that later.

I used three references for the Asuka drawing. Since it’s October and Fall I went with Asuka from the rebuilds since she wears that cool jacket and hat.

As for the Rei drawing, back in the day when I didn’t have internet or even a dvd player I used to rent vhs tapes from my public library. Luckily they carried anime which I of course rented. One of my favorite things about those cassettes were the trailers since they were made like amvs. They used to show scenes from the anime and played (usually) the opening theme song which I loved watching either because of the animation, the song or both.

As for Evangelion, I forget what tape I played (though I believe it was probably Blue Seed), but there was a trailer for Evangelion. I had never seen nor heard of it before. But it blew my mind. This rendition of the trailer had the opening theme song (so far I have only found another version of the trailer online which uses the song Ode to Joy) and it just blew me away. It was … beatiful … glorious… and captivating. I just wanted to see it.

One of the images that captivated me was when I saw a blue haired girl behind a window looking right at me with her beautiful red eyes. Such a great trailer.

As it turns out, after looking through my local library (I didn’t know how to really navigate the internet, much less their website), but it just so happened to carry the whole series of Evangelion. I was elated, but there was one problem. It was on DVD. I didn’t own one at that time. It was torture knowing it was so close and yet so far out of my reach.

Anyway, that is why I made this piece. I could have added some shading but it was too late by this point.

These are the references I used:

Here is the process for those who are interested:

And this is the process for Rei:

It was all going well until I made a mistake and once again ran my hand over Rei’s hair (that’s 4 mistakes in a row).

That should be all for now.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 4, 2018 0

Revisiting the One Piece Map of 2015

Back in 2015 I worked on a One Piece Map. And although I liked how it turned out, it was too big for me to scan it with my scanner. This led me to capture it with a camera. The problem was that I couldn’t get it quite squared and since it was buckling all over the place, it would still give me problems even if I did square it. At the time I wasn’t too good with Photoshop so I just did a quick fix, but it wasn’t that convincing.

Here is the new edited version:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/45050729932/in/dateposted-public/

I don’t know why, but I’ve always like the old map aesthetics.

Here are the original posts that contains the original process:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

And here is the process of the new digital process:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/45099649821/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44188906005/in/dateposted-public/

I used the puppet transform to fix the buckling that didn’t allow the map to be stretched into the edges.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/45099649591/in/dateposted-public/

After doing that, I had to make sure the edges all had the same length. But this means that there is going to be empty areas which I have to fix.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/31226305868/in/dateposted-public/

I used the old gold background to fill in the empty spaces.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/45099649421/in/dateposted-public/

After that I fixed some mistakes where the ink ran out a bit too much, I believe when I gave it a coffee wash. After that I had to fix the edges so that they meshed well.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44379542064/in/dateposted-public/

One thing that bugged me was the size and placement of the ONE PIECE text on the right corner. So I enlarged the ONE and then moved all the text a little to the right.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/30162002517/in/dateposted-public/

That left empty spaces and obvious seems so I had to fix that. First I duplicated the One Piece banner on the bottom layer.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/30162002467/in/dateposted-public/

Then I had to go over it with the brush tool to get rid of the seams.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/31226309108/in/dateposted-public/

And this is without the fixes.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44188911995/in/dateposted-public/

And with.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/44188913615/in/dateposted-public/

And that’s that.

I have some new artwork I did this year, but I thought I would try and update some old artwork along the way now that I have a bit more skill in editing. Though to be fair, back in the day I wanted to do it all traditional so I guess I was apprehensive about editing things digitally.

In any case.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 4, 2018 0

Inktober 2018 #3 – Kid Goku and Yusuke

I’ve had this idea of making a piece with Goku and Yusuke both wearing sunglasses. So I thought I should give that a try. Of course doing it for inktober would have it’s challenges since I would have to navigate through any mistakes I make along the way.

This is how I ended it. I forgot to add Goku’s tail…

Reference pictures used:

And here is the process for those who are interested:

From what I’ve learned, I can overcome mistakes by making light marks for my ideas and darker thicker lines for what the actual drawing will be.

And it was at this point that I was getting a bit scared. I had so many unnecessary lines and Goku’s right arm was just wrong. I almost wanted to just start a new one. But decided against it and see if I could save it. Also I accidentally hit my pen and it fell on the right corner of the paper. So far that is three mistakes in a row.

So despite looking quite dirty, I decided to fix all the mistakes.

Once again I was careless and rested my hand on Yusuke’s uniform, luckily this time it wasn’t too bad.

With the outline done, it is time to ink the darker areas and see if it can fix my mistakes.

And just to finish it, I added some hatching on certain areas to make a shading effect which not only made it look better but it also helped mask even more mistakes.

That should be all for now.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 3, 2018 0