sad – Darkcloud Xero's Online Shop

I wasn’t really sure how I would merge these two paintings. I know I wanted them to be back to back, so I flipped them accordingly. The colors were also not where I wanted them, so I adjusted them to their current form. When I put them on the same canvas there was a gap between them which had me stumped. At first I filled it in with some solid colors that made a clear separation between them. But that was just too simple and boring. Then I finally figured out that I could just merge them and have them interact with each other. I first had the backgrounds blend with each other. As I kept working I finally came to the realization that I could have both versions of Akemi back to back with their clothes appearing on each other’s side of the canvas. Then the idea of having hair strands move from the shy Akemi to the hardened Akemi came to my mind. Luckily the idea worked out. There was still something I felt was missing though. That’s why I decided to add the soul gem between the two Akemis. Behind the soul gem I wanted light to be emanating from it, but when I darkened the left side it looked a lot like feathers so I changed the original concept to be a wing motif. I think this version of both of them together looks much better.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Last week I started the line art for this painting (finally had some time to work on it a bit on Monday night and the rest on Tuesday night). I wasn’t too sure what I wanted to do so I was just sketching whatever came out. I then had the idea of having Kenshin look up, which gave him a sorrowful feeling. I then wanted some movement so I made his hair to blow in the wind. I was surprised how quickly the drawing came out, I used to take hours just to draw something even if it was simple line art like this one. From there I was looking at reference pictures of what I could use as the background. I found this really cool one of a shrine (turned out to be one from Nagoya when I researched it) but then I started thinking that a shrine doesn’t mean it’s a graveyard (plus it wasn’t in Kyoto) so once I had to work on the space right behind Kenshin I looked around google and found some references of graveyards. I used the impressionist brush for the texture but it looked really weird compared to everything else. But it turned out to be an easy fix when I started glazing and blending the graveyard pillars and steps. I thought of adding writing on them but that would take too much time to research, come up with and paint the intricacies of the kanji. So I just made some brush strokes that from a distance might look like actual writing but they have no actual meaning, they are just scribbles. The overall look I wanted to go for was the style used in the 90s anime which I believe holds up very well. Specially during the Kyoto arc.

Just as I was about to upload this painting I noticed that I hadn’t painted in Kenshin’s iconic cross shaped scar. Good thing I was too tired yesterday to upload it or he would have gone with out it.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

Tag: sad

Akemi Homura glance – Corruption

Kenshin graveyard visit