I’m on a manga high this week, I had a huge urge to draw at the beginning of the week but couldn’t figure out what, in the end I realized I just wanted to storyboard/draft sequences… so I ended up drawing the next update early and then toned like 7 other pages lmfao. When did this sudden transition from illustrator to sequential artist take place? But ya all I got done this week are pages that I can’t show ):

As colour experiment #2, I took a panel and colourized it with a little more effort this time. I have to say while this looks really rough because I only gave it like 15 minutes (colours only, not the actual grey scale shading), the effect is incredibly natural to produce; I don’t have to arbitrarily pinpoint a colour that I think will work with the image, I just have to choose a few lights and let it interact with the existing colour. The layers I stacked on top of the b/w image in order are:

• new layer (multiply mode), fill canvas with light brown (or whatever base colour that fits)
• new layer (color mode) on, low opacity air brush and set down the colours of the design. I chose airbrush for subtle gradients in colours. I didn’t clean up edges with a solid brush because this is not a serious image.
• new layers (try each mode out and see whichever looks nice, play around and stack them on top of each other), then airbrush lightly again random colours of the spectrum. you’ll notice some colours look like crap while others work nicely. you can remember which ones pair up well but always throw in something that stands out or is exotic to keep the image dynamic. for example I used some green on this picture here, and it works well even though you can’t really notice the green.
• notes: mix up use of darkness and saturation when choosing these “interaction” colours, desaturated colours work just as well in these layermodes as flaring ones

After playing with this I almost want to colourize the whole 10 page extra story, but it’d add to the cost of the book and it doesn’t really do all that much in my opinion ): and this hazy effect definitely doesn’t work with the rest of Blackbird LOL

AND ONTO THE SADDEST NEWS OF THE WEEK (aside from Japan) I DIDN’T GET PICKED FOR ANIME NORTH’S LOTTERY TABLES THIS YEAR so I won’t have a table there this year. There is technically 2 more days to the design contest but I really don’t want to do it just for the table. I would lose a big chance to sell my books, but I do feel relieved that I won’t have to think about whether an illustration will sell well as a print or not for my upcoming CGs, because I’m soooo long overdue to paint I was getting pissed off just thinking about those things. Plus this is a good excuse for me to actually walk around the convention/artist alley for real because god knows if I get a table I’ll just be glued to it for 3 days like every other year lol ): still I’m soooooo sad because almost everyone I know who ended up in the lottery got in AND I FEEL SO LEFT OUT. It’s not even that I desperately want to sell stuff, it’s completely the kind of attitude where you must have that awesome toy that all your friends have LOLOL

did you eat my pie
you ate my pie didn’t you
I know you ate my pie
are you listening
don’t ignore me

Just feel like drawing a lot of random crap this week! Though it’d probably help if I draw different characters from time to time LMFAO. I hope people don’t mind that all I ever feel like drawing these days is these two… This was probably the result of a comment I got about Blackbird being mad! She just clowns around all the time and rarely ever gets mad since she doesn’t really care about anything, even less so than Veloce, so I never draw her seriously . But she’s not very verbal when she does, usually expressing it through physical aggression rather than words. If I were to continue this scene she’d probably beat up Veloce or something… also I noticed that most of my old illustrations have this brown light to it, I think from my era of overlay-mode discovery, whereas nowadays I’m just like spamming this magenta/turqoise and cyan/biege combination now that I”ve discovered pin light lol. I’m so prone to abusing new things I figure out it’s horrible

and holy crap Anime North registration for artist alley was today, I thought I was SO PREPARED this year, have timeanddate.com setup and EVERYTHING and I was all shaking nervous when it got close to the time, like I do before performances during freshman year. I sent my email 2 seconds after the designated time and felt good, THEN I WENT TO THE FORUM AND READ THAT EVERYONE ELSE SENT THEIRS ON THE SECOND OR 1 SECOND AFTER, AND THIS HORROR STORY OF SOME DUDE WHO SENT HIS MAIL 2 SECONDS TOO LATE LAST YEAR AND WENT INTO LOTTERY lasjdfals;dhkjg. I hope I don’t wake up to a lottery e-mail LOL;;;; I even got my friend to help me again this year and it would suck so much if I end up not being able to go ):

ending with Blackbird backstage

newest addition to my collection EHEHHEHEHEHE IM SO GIDDY ^_^_^_^_^ Maelstrom by HarlequinRomantics

too excited to edit out the dust pieces on the black cloth XD everyone I show it to is like “LOL YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO WEAR THIS”, BUT OHHH I WILL, JUST YOU WATCH

And here’s something I doodled up in 30 minutes last night. I just suddenly wanted to draw something like this and decided to use the opportunity to try painting without lines/sketch again. Line art is crucial to my style because it helps me attain the neat, crisp effect and well defined details that is important to my style, mostly because I don’t have enough defining shadows in my colouring and the dark colours of line art provides that. But at the same time line art takes way too much time and after I complete every picture, I have the urge to delete the line art because it really makes the difference between a drawing and  a painting. In the end I think I’m choosing between two effects, they both have their charms but I just happen to be able to do one much better than the other.

What do you prefer? Something with the effect like this picture / “Immortal” / “Caterpillar”, or the feel on most of the other pictures in the featured section of my site?

trying out different ways of managing tones ^^ I think I draw too infrequently so every pic I draw is a clusterfuck of crap