ラブストーリーは突然に

 

i feel the big sad.

and why oh whyyy can't i make anime faces work.

A Human's Touch

 Cover art appreciation for TWRP's new single "A Human's Touch".

I'm pretty sure the original artist is Lazerhorse.
I want to do a mini album cover art tribute to their work they did for TWRP's music, I love these covers.

Thinking I might get Clip Studio Paint? Didn't know it has an animating feature. Since losing Photoshop I haven't had any software that lets me animate. Not that I ever did anything grand with it, but having it as an option was nice?

Well. art updates?
Focusing on redbubble stuff, maybe inprint down the track if I can get in? Sell some fanart there. Stickers to start on redbubble.

Luv (sic)

 

MyDcmbr

Cheating a bit with today's DD, I was lining a Demeter portrait and realised it was close to midnight, so I quickly slapped some colours here. It's a work in progress that took a small detour. Two hours later, the portrait was completed though! Glad to be posting to tumblr, just gotta try and keep this a regular thing...

Well, so that's the 3 Hades portraits done. My next project is to get a painting done for my bathroom and plan what to do with a giant canvas I bought. I had some inspiration yesterday to paint a Tears of the Kingdom painting - can't recall why though? 

I'm intending to participate in more Sketch A Day challenges, but I haven't yet...

No digital projects at the moment, so maybe another 3 Hades characters? Zagreus, Thanatos and Megaera? 

........

I've been thinking about what my "thing" could be for poster prints, what the appeal of my stuff could be, and I think groups of characters? I thought a poster of Ace Attorney characters could be fun. Possibly have it so that no matter how you rotate/flip the poster, it still looks okay? 

If not Ace Attorney games, something else that's appealing for me to study.

--- ❄️ ---

16/2/24 Notes on the Demeter portrait.

I sometimes look back at something I've drawn and wonder what I was even doing. So, I'm going to jot down what I remember was going through my mind and the progress on how this image formed.

From the beginning, there was the sketch.

While I'm at it, here's the sketches for the previous two Olympian gods.

Visual studies. I learned through doing these that they all have unique laurels using different plants! That was a really exciting visual motif to discover. Also, that they all have little fun motifs.

From Demeter's study, I saw that she wasn't wearing a laurel on her head, rather that it appears to be what's floating behind her head. Her story of seeking out her daughter, I found that Persephone inherited some of Demeter's visuals - the braid (both have that wheat shaped braids!) and some colouration. Another detail I never picked up on in the game, is that Demeter is holding what looks like one of the green ribbons in Persephone's design. Her frosty themes, like the snowflake shape on her shoulders, I wove into her laurel design. She grows plants, what if maybe her bitterness and resentment wove its way into the plants' form that was used in making her laurel?? Also, and I don't feel I achieved this one, the shape of her eyelashes - specifically what direction they branch out from, was intended to be hexagonal like a snowflake. 

From the jump, I was a little uneasy about drawing Demeter. I learned back in January when I was drawing the Rolled Play S2 character Graham that I really am inexperienced with drawing aged faces. Demeter was good practice for getting more comfortable with that infrequently taken road. 

I don't know how to work these into a paragraph so, dot points:

* Previous two gods, when drawing them I sketched the anatomy to build their forms. For Demeter, I just drew her and made adjustments by sight. This was SUCH a different approach, and I feel like the results, to me, feel different, more loose. I feel that pretty often my character drawings look stiff in their poses. 

* I thought, hey if I ever look for something in the old library of stuff that I want to have a go at animating someday, what if the red on her shoulders, under her snowflakes, had small red chunks of fabric that crumble and fall off, slowly dropping like snowfall. 

Lines and c o l o u r

lineweight. bringing something forward or letting it fall back, create depth.

I've found that, even though working with a small 500 x 700 canvas, I still ZOOM IN so much to get fine line details in there. When I would turn the original sketch layer back on, I found that the laurels behind her had chunkier lines than the thin, finer lines I had just used for her face and hair. Then, ZOOMING BACK OUT, I would see the disparity. I think I have to decide to either work with a bigger canvas size, or stick to what I'm doing but limit what size brush I'm using. 

*When creating a work in future, do some prep. Decide on brush size, maybe after a sketch is completed/cleaned up, map the colours. Can help decide line weight. Eg, using a DD size canvas, brush size average will be 6.0, scale from that starting point to create depth accordingly.

Another thing from studying the Hades characters I wanted to do, as well as look at the structure of their designs, was to analyse how Jen Zee uses colour. I loooovelove her use of colour. Demeter's got what could be muted, warm colours, but a lot of her shading uses a cooler tone. It really creates a good visual contrast that also works with her narrative! 

This is the final piece! For now, anyway! I'm not 100% with it, but I have to stare at it longer to pinpoint where I think could improve. I don't like that her braids look like one shape around her neck, I wanted her right braid to easily be discernible as crossing in front and the left braid drooping behind it. I thought, a highlighting line to separate them like I did for Dionysus' arm? But, idk, I actually don't like how that looks in his picture v much. 

* LINES: I had admired a technique I'd noticed a number of character illustrators do which is to colour segments of their line work (if using lines to outline, cartoon-style?). I thought about doing that for Demeter too, I realise that it helps with that depth and breaks up the design - segments things apart. 

I don't know how to credit that idea. Do I reference other artists I've seen use it? I try not to stare too long at other artists' work anymore, I tent to subconsciously study their technique and it feels like copying when I do something later and realise, oh I think I got this idea from elsewhere. 

so bad at typing this out. I'm constantly distracted. I keep wanting to check tumblr for updates on how the Demeter I posted there is doing - she's a hit! Within the first 12 hours I got more notes than either Aphrodite or Dionysus got. Not bad for the character I was the most nervous about. I wondered if I should go back and fix both of those characters so that they're as detailed as Demeter ended up being. That's the thing, I wanted them to be a triptych. But they don't look similar at all. Why did I add this light coloured border to Demeter's background? I thought it looked better than a solid colour. (also I think it's because I'd been looking at photo frames quite a bit recently, shopping around for the right one to hang up some prints I have to deco the house).

uuggg is this everything? it doesn't feel like it, but hopefully i'm reporting the significant stuff. 

Asleep Among Endives

I feel heartbroken that I have people who care about me that I feel like I can't engage with and tell them everything that's going on in my head. 

I sometimes get facebook memories of text conversations I printscreened and uploaded to save reminders to save as evidence, and a small hope that maybe my circumstances would be different when it comes back to me in a Facebook Memory. For the past few years, it became a reminder of how much hasn't changed. My circumstances are very different now, I'm free from a lead that I blame for much of my weakness. I look back at the times friends urged me to go to police about events. I've never had the conviction to stand up for myself. "Why bother."

I envy people who appear to be embracing life, and the world.
I struggle with seeking any help. I can't even bring myself to book an appointment to get my glasses updated. Even though they embarrass me to wear cause they're visibly damaged, I cannot muster some sort of courage or strength to go and get them updated. I couldn't defend myself from accusations. It feels like an opinion is made, no one is curious about my side. I want to say, "has anyone ever asked my side??". People like my friends have. Who have known about my struggles for years. They want to help. But I can't, and I don't know why. I wish I could move, I have the ability to move my limbs, I know I do, but I won't. I don't know why. 

I have the capacity no. I don't have an excuse not to. And yet, I still can't at the same time. 
I don't know if it's because I've been this way for so long it just feel safer within myself to turn to stone, let gentle lichen grow on the body I hate.

This doesn't make sense anymore. I thought I'd do some stream of consciousness to help me figure out how I feel.

I wish I were a cinderblock. Standing at the end of a dark wooden pier pointing to the centre of a lake.
I'd move my stone body over the ledge. Soothing dark, crystal water. 
Not really. I'd be imagining it, unblinking. I'll drag myself home, thinking about the water and the calm. 

NEO-FUTURE

Dionysus from Hades, original design by Jen Zee.
He's the 2nd of my planned 3 Hades character design portraits and studies.

Filling a page of him in my sketchbook felt rewarding, getting back into trying to feel more active with creating something. I really struggled with the pose for him, I did want to include his sceptre/staff he has in his original art, but I couldn't make it work. Anything I tried I felt looked unadventurous, too familiar with the original.

The last sketch I did of him was of him doing the Prince Sidon smile. It was just for funsies, but I ended up liking that one best. 
My DD today is of the unfinished linework I did for him.

One thing I want to call myself out for: I don't know what it's called, but I notice there's a trend over the past few years of colouring characters with lighter colours where the shadows would be. It could be the bounce light, but it really looks good to me. I don't really know how to do it though, this is just me trying to recall what I think I've seen (never want to look up a reference when I'm doing it - I used to accidentally mimic what I saw when I would).

I'm thinking I'll remove his left arm for this pose when I work on it more. I don't feel like it works, and I don't like that he's off-centre. I want to look similar to what I did for Aphrodite, even though there's some perspective stuff going on that I don't think I can work into Dionysus unless I change a lot.

Ladybug

 

Had a productive day of art.
Nothing grand, but a big one for me.

No work today because of the public holiday. I was lounging around, can't recall how I got onto think about it, but had the idea to create print-ready portraits of characters from Hades using old depictions of them. Like statues from antiquity. Also get some character design practice in, studying Jen Zee's art style (with no intention to copy/mimic, just zero in on what I like about them so much).

I whipped up reference sheets for Aphrodite, Dionysus and Demeter, then went to Office Works to print them. I didn't want to be using a screen as I sketch the character in my sketchbook, and I think that was a really nice exercise. 

I've since decided to not use references from antiquity art for the poses - turns out that's been done quite a bit already. I think it could be okay if I tried my own hand at doing it, but it actually didn't feel like an exciting idea from the beginning - I just figured it could help with anatomy if I found a photo of a marble statue one of the gods.

So, here's Aphrodite as she appears in Hades, designed by Jen Zee.
Studying and then drawing her was fascinating, there were a few details I never picked up on, like that I think it must be an olive plant used in the laurel, including a few actual olive fruits. 

Anyway, so this isn't print-ready. But, it's a sketch I could use for something someday if I wanted to pursue it further.