Daily Markers: Days 250-263

March ends another month of my one-year marker challenge, and it ends with me just over 100 days away from the end. Yeah, I've decided I'm going to probably stop the public daily challenge because I'm getting a bit burned out (I plan to continue doing daily drawings for practice and working towards pieces). Anyway! The last two weeks include the proper 250th drawing and more work using the Strathmore 400 Series marker paper.

I did a simple fanart drawing of the masks the Daughters of Aku where in season five of Samurai Jack. I would like to do more fanart from the series, and the season continues the series' tradition of gorgeous art, so there's a lot draw upon.

 A simple, quick picture for the first day of spring. Used a brush pen for the lines.

 The Magic Mirror from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. This is another subject I want to come back to, namely drawing the Evil Queen and Snow White. I want to do more Disney fanart and kinda work through the animated canon.

As for the pic itself, this was a fun challenge. First, I had to find good references for the frame of the mirror and had to pick and choose the most consistent parts. I had fun working out how to do the spirit's face. In the original movie stills, near as I can tell, the forehead grades pretty smoothly into the upper cheeks and nose. I am pleased with how I was able to get the gradation and getting it rather smooth. The blackness of the mirror background helped to pull the face's colors together.

 A quick pic of a green lady elf-fae being. I played a little with using some pink for undertones on the cheeks, nose, and shoulders. It didn't blend as well as I wanted, but it helps to keep it from being too monotone.

 A bit of a humorous self portrait. Sometimes the ideas don't come. So I drew myself trying to brainstorm something.

A pawn

For the last week I chose to do some fanart of Sailor Moon; when all else fails, fall back on fanart of the classics.

I opted to do those referred to the Inner Scouts/Senshi and Sailor Chibi Moon. For this series I wanted to play with using colored lines for most of the portraits, except for black for the eyes; depending on the color, I used a combination of Pigma Microns and Copic Multiliners. I was inspired a piece of Sailor Moon fanart by Chihiro Howe that used blue lines, as well as other pieces in her overall work. Using colored inks add a different look to a piece than what you would get from using black. Depending on the color and application, I think it can soften the line art once the color is added. The black being used for the eyes helps to draw attention to them.

Over the course of the series, however, I ran into a recurring problem and a gripe I have with the paper. You can see it in many of the above pieces, but especially with Sailor Moon's, the ink for the line art tended to smudge. I'm not sure if it was because the ink wasn't thoroughly dried or just the nature of the paper, but it was frustrating for the ink to get picked up by the marker and ruining an otherwise fine picture. I understood for the portions where the ink was applied much more strongly, such as under the neck, but it seemed to be worse around the nose and lips. Maybe I need to let it dry longer or apply less before coloring.

And there were some problems with Sailor Chibi Moon's image. Short answer: refilled a maker a bit to much and it was too juicy, hence blotting. If you want to see the original before my fixes, you can see it here.

And that's it for this month. April is here, which means time for the April Drawing Challenge. I've done pretty well for the last couple of years. I'll continue with the marker challenge, but I'll be using Sadyna's 30-day marker challenge prompt list for inspiration.