Inktober 2021 Day 12

I’ve yet to see it, but I think it was a year ago when I found out that Reina was actually involved with Nier. At first I thought it was just for promotional work but I soon found out that she was actually in a canon stage play where she plays a YorHa member. The singing she did was amazing. I should seriously see it soon.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 12, 2021 0

Guts Despair and Goodbyes V2

I drew this way back in May of this year as a tribute to Kentaro Miura. Looking at it again though, I wasn’t too happy with how thin Guts looked. So I fixed that digitally with Photoshop. I ten added some more hatching and some screentone.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

September 13, 2021 0

Blood stained gift for her future

This is based on a drawing I did way back in (at least from a quick search) 2016. At the time I was completely new to digital painting or using colors really. I was more into drawing and was really struggling with color. I seriously thought I could bypass that issue by focusing on the values using my pencil and then hoping that Photoshop would deal with the colors on it’s own. Of course, nothing is ever that easy.

You can see my past attempt here:

Traditional X Digital (Color) IV II Final

Actual Lelouch final

I can proudly say I have made some progress in the last 4 years.

I used the line art as a quick map of how I wanted to set up the painting, but overall the line art would be left out. Once I had some reference photos of how castles and the sky could look like I began painting. I started with the castle first and that took me a while since I kept working with the way I believed the shadows would look in my scenario. But I made the mistake of not painting the sky so I could figure out what colors I would eventually end up using. With a bit more experience I should be able to figure this out in a couple of minutes but setting up the lighting for the background took me a couple of hours. Once I was satisfied with what I had, I then began working on Lelouch. But since the colors for the background were dealt with, getting his colors was much easier. Dealing with him did have to be finished today though. I want to be fast enough to paint something like this in at least one day, but for now it is taking about two days. For this painting I decided to use the spray paint for the sun’s lighting and in some sections of the clouds and the castle. I seriously should use it more since it made the effect I wanted much easier.

My brother has recently started watching Code Geass for the first time, so when I asked him for a suggestion of course Code Geass would be the option. I figured that would be a good excuse to retry doing this painting.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

January 19, 2021 0

Shishio Makoto Kaguzuchi

I wanted to have a bit more of an anime painting style this time. When I was done, I wanted it to look a bit more textured. So I ended up using a rough paper overlay. I ended up using both Corel Painter and Photoshop. While looking through the Rurouni Kenshin anime, there was a scene where Shishio’s eyes are glowing purple (episode 60). Just for the heck of it I wanted to give it a try and it just fit so well that I decided to keep it that way.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

November 22, 2020 0

Inktober 2020 05 Blade

Today’s theme was blade, there were many options but for some reason I wanted to draw Makoto Shishio from Rurouni Kenshin. Definitely one of the best villains. His character design is also really unique and awesome. One of the coolest techniques he has is the Tsui no Hiken: Kaguzuchi, you know, the one where he creates a swirling fire stream around his sword. I looked at the manga and the anime and they both had a forward view of Shishio performing the technique. So I wanted to change it up a bit and draw Shishio from the side. Since I had a bit more time today I decided to add some hatching and inking. Hopefully I can do some more in the drawings to come.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

October 5, 2020 0

Kenshin graveyard visit

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

September 9, 2020 0

Guts seeking the end of the darkness

I really like painting Guts. I had another idea of painting him traversing through a forest covered in snow. But that idea might get changed when I work on it once the snowy season starts this year. In it’s stead I decided to work on a piece where Guts is travelling through a forest at night, trying to reach the end and seek the warm safety of the light.

This time I’m working with blue as the background which I have yet to fully understand. All the colors work differently here so I had some setbacks at times. What I did in some cases was putting top layers of different shades of blue and used multiply on guts and some of the surroundings to darken areas around the background. After I felt the colors looked good together I then added some other layers to try and mesh Guts with the background. On top of all of that I then added more paint to add highlights and shadows so that I could try and integrate it more as a whole painting. For the end result I wanted to have it look like it is both painted but still has some aspects of the original manga art style. Hopefully I accomplished that.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

September 1, 2020 0

Guts One Eyed Berserker Armor

This is another piece piece from Inktober that I wanted to do more work on (it can be seen here). I originally was thinking of inking it all traditionally but when I finished the lineart and was erasing my pencil marks, I was a bit careless which led me to fold it and rip the paper. Having done that I thought it was a great chance to work with Krita again.

I had already inked the berserker armor before, but having done the full armor (minus the left leg) took quite a long time. I can’t even imagine how much it takes to do this for a whole chapter. Specially when drawing multiple characters or detailed backgrounds. After inking and hatching Guts and his armor I decided to use the texture brushes for the background which made the work go much faster. It looked good by the end but I decided to darken the whole piece which I think made it look better.

One thing I wasn’t planning on doing was the helmet. But when looking through the manga I came upon the section when Guts was being consumed by the armor and you could see the head of his inner beast taking form from the cape. I am surprised I don’t remember this scene since it is quite remarkable and stunningly drawn. I’m really glad I found out about it because I feel the overall piece I drew looks much better.

Hasta la proxima,

-NUBE

November 10, 2019 0

Honedge Woodwork II

As to be expected this piece is taking quite some time to do. But I’ve been having fun doing it. I’m actually almost done. I should be able to start the finishing touches by the end of this week, then comes painting which takes a couple of days since I have to let it dry as I paint different coats and use different colors for the different sections that require it. With that said, here are some pictures of the process. There are too many so I will only post some here so you get an idea. If you do want to follow along and see all the pictures I took of the process, then just go here. The link will take you to my flickr account where I made an album that contains all the photos.

Before that, last time I mentioned that I had lost the photos of when I started making the Honedge blade. Luckily I found them. Here are the ones I managed to salvage.

That last one really reminds me of the Dragon Slayer from Berserk.

Now back to where we left off.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29407860114/in/album-72157673719361220/

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29476062543/in/album-72157673719361220/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/30103713315/in/album-72157673719361220/

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29808958640/in/album-72157673719361220/

So that was a long post wasn’t it? Really long. Hopefully this much helps out you guys trying to build your own. I’m actually pretty close to finishing already. Now I’m working on the final touches so that I can start painting. I will add some more updates later.

As stated before, if you wish to see the full gallery of pictures I will have them up as their own album over on flickr here.

I will be working trying to enter an other art contest. So will update you guys on that hopefully tomorrow.

Hasta la próxima,

-Nube

October 7, 2016 0

Honedge Woodwork I

Right after NDK I got a commission, this time though I have a chance to work on some woodwork. It’s been quite a while since I’ve worked on wood so it was no surprise that I had to relearn all the techniques I used for the Keyblades years past.

This time I will be doing a wooden sword with a sheath. This means that I will have a lot of parts and details to keep in mind. Because of this, this piece will take a while.

Back when I was still in… was it 8th grade of middle school or my first year of high school? I had tried making a sword with a sheath. The blade was done using a flat piece of aluminum I had in my backyard and made a sheath out of some wood I also had laying around.

Keep in mind that I was barely getting into woodwork by this point so I didn’t have any woodworking tools. So I just used a hammer to bend the bar of aluminum (to give it that katana like curve), and this really thick chisel, and hack saw to cut the excess of aluminum and to shape the blade.

As for the wooden sheath and handle I really only had an unused knife that was no longer useful in the kitchen. So I used that to shape the wood. As for the finishing touches for both the blade and the sheath I did get to use a hand file tool that was owned by my father. While I was getting close to finishing I did end up having to buy some sanding paper in order to smooth it all out as much as possible.

So what was the result?

Here it is:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29774681342/in/dateposted-public/

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If you look closely you can see some etchings on the blade and the sheath. Truth is that the aluminum bar had some really bad imperfections that I couldn’t take out, so I did the only thing I could think of back then, I worked some design around it. Now as for how I did it? I actually just used a screw driver and a hammer to etch it out.

The sheath was rather problematic since I had to hollow it out in order to make the blade fit and stay in place. I think it was a combination of cutting out as much as I could with the knife and then reducing as much as I could with the sandpaper. Although I don’t quite remember the details, I do remember that it took a long time to do. Luckily I didn’t mind sitting outside and working for long hours non-stop even back then.

Now as for sticking the two pieces together I used this glue that my father used for his work. The glue was made to stick concrete blocks together but wasn’t all that great for wood. But since that was all I had to use, I used it of course. To this day it is still in one piece although it has been cracking apart since then as you can see in some of the pictures.

At some point during high school about 2 to 3 years later I tried my hand at making another one. I wanted to make a long sword, my inspiration was formed from Enishi’s sword (from Rurouni Kenshin) Except this time I was using a steel piece of metal that was no longer being used. I don’t quite remember exactly where it came from, but I do remember that i had to cut it into shape from a bigger piece.

Once I had the shape I wanted I began hammering it into the curve I wanted and even tried my hand at smelting using a grill that was no longer being used. Of course this was at a time when I had even less knowledge of how smelting worked. All I know was that blacksmiths used it to make and shape swords so I felt I had to give it a try.

As to be expected I didn’t really get much out of it. I mean, using wood and some dried out grass and plants I had around me would only get so hot after all. Although it did get hot enough to start melting the protective coating in the outer walls of the grill. I forget how hot it got, but it was nowhere near what was needed to heat up the steal so that it would be easy for me to join a folded piece of the steel onto itself (which was the whole point of doing this now that I remember). But it did give the blade this nice black coloration which took the place of the hamon.

So yes, I knew very little about swords at the time, but I did want to learn. And since I didn’t have internet at the time I had to rely solely on what I saw on tv or on movies/anime. And since that was the only way to get information, I relied on trying to reproduce what I wanted to learn more about in order to get a better understanding of how it worked.

Again since this was supposed to be a sword I made the handle and sheath out of wood. I left this piece unfinished since I didn’t know if it would be worth finishing with the little basic tools I had at the moment (I won’t).

Before I forget, here are some pictures of said sword. It’s really long. In fact it was so long when I first made it that it wobbled quite a bit and bent when extended on it’s flat side. Even after cutting the tip by quite a bit I still had this problem, but luckily not as badly.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29888173475/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29853395146/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29888170935/in/dateposted-public/

But anyway, I bring these two up because they serve as the basis for this next project. Although the keyblades possessed quite a lot of detail, they were still only one piece. The Honedge will be made of essentially at the very least three pieces that I have to link together. And that of course require a large amount of measuring, planning, concentration and detailing.

But rest assured that I have started working on it since quite a while ago actually. The actual Honedge didn’t take all that long to make, about a weekend. But the sheath will. I haven’t done one in a while, in fact it has been more than what 7 years?! Woah. No wonder I had forgotten some rather simple techniques…

Anyway, all the planning and measuring was done a while ago so now it’s just a matter of making it.

Sadly I was only working on it for three days a week since Japanese class was getting the better of me. But I am happy to announce that I have finally gotten a good rhythm going so I feel I can put some more time into working on this piece, finally.

Recently I changed phones, and although I remember backing all the pictures from the phone before resetting it to factory settings, it seems I didn’t get quite all of them. I had pictures of the process of the Honedge since the beginning but I can’t find them anywhere… So long story short, I think I deleted them by accident…

I know they are somewhere, if I find them I’ll post them here.

For the time being here is what I have done so far. Nothing really to say, the pictures will do all the talking really (hopefully there aren’t too many):

https://www.flickr.com/photos/darkcloudxero/29261428683/in/dateposted-public/

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