Inktober 2025 day 1 Mustache

Today marks the first day of Inktober 2025. I won’t really be following the prompts but when I saw mustache it reminded me about a favorite manga/anime character Harima Kenji from School Rumble. Now I feel like re reading the series just like I did with A Cheeky Angel.

So far I have been able to complete Inktober since 2018. That’s seven years which is crazy. Hopefully this year won’t be different. I always notice a level up every year so hopefully that doesn’t change this year as well. I have a wide assortment of pens that I bought years ago but never used so I want to change that this time. Today I used the INC. Precision pen which is actually amazing. Very smooth and responsive to pressure.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 1, 2025 0

Start of a New Year! 2017

I guess since high school I have been doing an art piece especifically for new years. Usually I start it the day before and finish it on the first day of new years. This year though I made 2 before new years (one of them was El Chavo, and the other one I will show below) and the Eri Sawachika one for new years. I’ve been quite busy lately but when it comes to just drawing and not painting the workflow is not that bad and I can move relatively quickly.

This was one of the other pieces I did before new years. Again I was inspired by that video I showed on the last post. It was also done quickly so I made a lot of mistakes, but the biggest is the proportions… especially the “bobblehead”. But I figured I would try and fix it digitally using some techniques I saw online.

Character is Harima Kenji from School Rumble.

I used this reference, but decided to change things up a bit, for some reason had an image of him in a Kung Fu like scenario (like Bruce Lee). Decided to take off his glasses just as an extra challenge.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/24639023747/in/dateposted-public/

Bobblehead Harima… I guess I was so focused on the pens that I didn’t think of the proportions especially since I imagined his whole body from the get go and I ran out of space below.:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/24639000007/in/dateposted-public/

And here he is with an edited head:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/24639002027/in/dateposted-public/

Posture still seems a bit off. But it was just a test anyway so it should be fine as it is for now.

And so having shown both of the pre new years pieces, let’s now focus on the piece I made for and on new years. Again I chose someone from School Rumble. I wanted to do something simple and just modify it for new years (plus I wanted to learn a thing or two from a pro). With that in mind I decided to recreate this scene:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39477590652/in/dateposted-public/

Here is the quick draft (as to be expected it is quite faster to just draw it one time instead of the two times that I usually do, rought draft then a clean final version):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/38799615714/in/dateposted-public/

By this point I finally figure out that there was no way I could just copy everything over (so much for just doing a simple piece…) New years in these parts of the world are winter after all, so I had to dress her up appropriately. After a quick search online for winter clothes I came upon this reference picture:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/38612206075/in/dateposted-public/

So I decide to use that sweater and that design:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39477594802/in/dateposted-public/

Should’ve stopped by this point and made the rest digitally, but since I wasn’t sure of how I was going to go about it I continued on:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39477594492/in/dateposted-public/

… I didn’t even do any clean designs, I just made some quick lines with no real ideas on the type of knitting. It doesn’t look horrible but I should try harder.

Here it is with the filled out dark parts:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/38612203505/in/dateposted-public/

So I got to this point by the end of new years but it was quite late so I had to call it a day.

Time was running low already so at this point I finally decided to mix it up with digital techniques. But for that I had to search up screentones and textures that I had to use. That took a while. On top of that I decided to clean up my messy texture lines so that it would be ready for the knit textures.

Here are the textures and screentones I used:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39477592442/in/dateposted-public/

Then I had to take out the color and change the contrast:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39477592872/in/dateposted-public/

This is the screentone I used to darken areas up:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/38799647334/in/dateposted-public/

Since it’s new years, of course I needed some fireworks:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/24640047977/in/dateposted-public/

That looked a bit lonely though so I decided to add a cityscape:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/39507959611/in/dateposted-public/

I couldve modified the darkness of the fireworks screentone with the cityscape’s lighter sky but that would take too much time, so I decided against it.

This is the final piece, clean and simple (though quite time comsuming due to finding and modifying the screentones, and cleaning up the rough knit lines I made).

After making the piece smaller and a .jpg it made the cityscape screentone quite choppy.

Aside from the obvious changes I made, I also changed her expression. I wanted her to be contemplative and yet have some hope for the future, thus the small smile.

Anyway, this year has finally started so lets do our best to make our goals successful.

Happy New Year.

And as always

Hasta la proxima,

-Nube

January 1, 2018 0

Traditional X Digital (Color) III

This is the third try at coloring. This time I will be using an old piece from 2008. This one is from one of my top manga favourites School Rumble. The reference used for this recreation came from Vol. 1 Chapter b01.

Here is the original:

I remember the first time I saw this page I fell in love with the artwork so much that I just felt compelled to recreate it. I noticed that there isn’t much shading done on my attempt. I wonder if that is because I drew with pencils not much stronger than HB or because it is so old that the graphite has rubbed off? Or maybe this was back when I was still trying to master shading?

In any case here is the piece I used to practice my digital painting:

I’d say i got rather close, although my lines are quite rough thus showing how much I was struggling making fine lines and making a clean recreation. On top of that the lack of shading does make coloring digitally more difficult. Despite all that, I am quite amazed at how it turned out.

As for my first attempt to color it, here it is:

It doesn’t look all that much special does it? Take into account that I did do quite a bit of work on this piece. I also added quite a bit of details with countless layers to add more depth to the drawing, but in the end it still looked rather mediocre.

That’s when I remembered a technique I had been playing around with when I was painting the first Cardcaptor Sakura drawing. And that is to add a duplicate layer of the drawing (specially if the if it lacks shading) so that it can give it more depth and detail. So here’s how it looks after doing just that.

Remember I just duplicated the original drawing layer (the drawing layer is all on it’s own set above all layer, marked as Multiply):

Doing something so simple gave it so much depth, and I really didn’t have to change any of the colors to achieve it. It’s quite wondrous how much the drawing and colors changed just by duplicating the original drawing. The hair alone was giving me problems, but this one technique gave me the color and feel I was looking for.

After this I tried adding some more details like a bit of blush and more details around her body:

After this I just tried playing around to try and create a background from scratch just using my imagination and the tablet. I did ok, and would just need to add a bit more layers of detail on all aspects to truly bring it to life. But in the end I see no need for that since I can do that and more just by doing it traditionally first then applying color later.

In any case here are my unfinished attempts at creating a background:

It looks quite out of place next to Yakumo, but making it all fit would require quite a bit of tweaking to make it all cohesive and look good. But I think I should just develop my own style for now and learn how to make art digitally that way and then eventually learn about making all digital work (at least for backgrounds) later on. Though I will just end up integrating those techniques to work along side mostly traditional artwork.

I will stop working on art for a bit so I can work on that Youtube video I mentioned before. I want to try and make something different and that’s also high quality, so that will probably take me a bit to make and edit. Hopefully not too long.

Hasta la proxima,

-XERO

July 25, 2016 0

The final update on the “Draw Our Mascot” contest entry 7/2/15

I finally finished that drawing I was talking about. Here is a link to the contest just in case you guys want to join, theres still 18 days left: http://anime-x-life.deviantart.com/journal/Draw-our-Mascot-CONTEST-18-DAYS-LEFT-533616298

There’s another contest I will enter which will end in 8 days on Youtube, more on that one later. I also have a commission I will start soon and another contest, but that contest will end in December.

I will write a bit about this drawing tomorrow and what I was thinking when drawing it.

July 2, 2015 0