Pokecember: 25-31

It's the last day of both the year and Pokécember. It's been a pretty good year for Pokémon, from the overall 20th anniversary (did you grab as many mythical pokémon from the giveways as you could?) to Pokémon Go to Sun and Moon. I am glad to use this month's challenge to try out a few things with my Copic markers. And now, to wrap up the year of drawings, here are the last seven days' of Pokécember drawings.

 25. Fave Generation Trainer (24): XY. It was the first game where you could customize your character, which I was so happy to have. I could change the appearance and the clothes, which makes the player character more like me. I also really enjoyed the Pokémon and setting for this game, especially Poke Amie. Glad to have both customization and a slightly modified version of Amie back in Sun and Moon.

 26. Fave Trainer Class: Pokemon Ranger. If I was an actual person in the pokémon world, I'd probably be a Ranger. I opted to go with the XY design because, again, I just really like the design of the rangers in that game. The uniforms look nice and I would wear it.
 

 27. Fave Rival: Blue/Gary Oak. Going classic with this one.

 28. Fave Gym Leader: Lenora from Black/White. The first gym leader of the game, but I liked her a lot.

 

29: Fave E4 Member: Siebold. I really liked the Elite Four members of XY, so it was a tough call which one I wanted to be my fave, but Siebold one out this time. He's a chef and a water user.

  

30: Fave Evil Team: Team Rocket. Again, going with the classics. Even now, 20 years later, everyone knows who Team Rocket is. Opted to go with the game's version and not the more familiar team of Jesse, James, and Meowth from the show because I wanted to homage the classic game grunts.

 

31: 20th Anniversary Moment. I opted to go with celebrating the overall game's anniversary. I had a couple memories I was tempted to use, but I don't know if I could get them across in the available space. But I can say that the reference used was the Pokémon Red cartridge I held onto over the years. I'm pretty sure I started with Blue, but kept the Red cartridge from my second attempt at the game.  So, what's better to celebrate the 20th anniversary than referencing one of the games that started it all?

And that's it for this month and this year. I'm rather pleased with the progress I've made over the last half of the year with my daily marker challenge, as well as my larger goal to draw something everyday (462 days strong!). I hope to keep both streaks going for the next year. I want to do larger and more polished pieces, as well as get back to the basics to strengthen my overall skills. I'll continue to work with markers as well as try to do more digital and watercolor/gauche paintings. And, if I can get my act together, I want to get to do some comics, probably short ones first followed with getting to an ongoing story. It'll take work, but I want to do what I can to add to the world what positive things I can.

Happy new year! May it be a creative and positive one!

Pokecember: 19-24

Here are almost a week's worth of Pokécember pictures, plus a general walkthrough of one of the pieces.

19. Fave Alolan form: Alolan Vulpix. This was one of the first Alolan pokemon revealed, and I just loved how it contrasted with the original fire versions of Vulplix and Ninetales. The Alolan Ninetales is just a gorgeous as the Kalos one.

 20. Fave Mega Evolution: Mega Gardevoir. I enjoyed using this psychic-fairy cross, especially later in the game.

21. Fave Z-move: Breakneck Blitz. I haven't played much of Moon yet, so I haven't used many Z-moves. Which means, yeah, this one. I like how I was able to do the dust cloud for this image. I opted not to do any inked lines for the cloud to keep it less solid compared to the Yungoos.

 22. Fave single stage: Furfrou. Big poodle pokemon from XY, but I really liked it. I had some other pokemon that took its spot later in the game, but I liked playing with this normal type for the early parts.

23. Fave starter (25): Froakie. Hey, my fave pokémon is Greninja, and I liked pretty much the whole line, so of course Froakie is my fave starter. I also got a little ahead of the list and jumped a couple days. This means that I did day 25's day on the 23rd, and will have to adjust the next couple of days. Which leads us to day 24 (23), fave legendary.

Pokecember: 1-18

Ah, December. The end of the year. I'm rather impressed with how the last few months have gone. I've managed to crack 150+ images this month with my daily marker drawings. This time I used the prompt list from Pokécember, which I got from here. I decided it would be fun to go through my favorite pokémon and continue developing my techniques.

For this month's drawings, I did more pieces that started with markers applied with no inked line down, just the color pencil sketches as a base. Not all of the pieces were done this way, but many were. I think when I approach the drawings without lines I tend to be more painterly, even I don't always do that much rendering. You can see the results below, and I'll explain a bit for each pokémon.

 1. Fave normal type: Stoutland. Most of the pokémon on this list are ones that I've played with in current or past games. That's the case with Stoutland. I tend to go with pokémon that are special types, but something about this dog just made me like it, so I kept it to the end of the main story.

This was drawn with the markers first, then I went back with my pens, in this case the brown/sepia ones.

 2. Fave water: Greninja. For the longest time I never had a favorite species in the game series. Then came X/Y and I fell for this frog-line. Greninja is, hands down, my fave pokémon in addition to my fave water type. Kinda mucked up the coloring a little.

 3. Fave grass: Servine. I actually don't use that many grass types because I try to balance with my water starter, so grass types never got much of a focus for me. I did play with a Snivy at the start of a second copy I had, but didn't get far in that game. I do like the look of Servine.

 4. Fave fire: Delphox. Another exception from the played group. I had the starter as a trade from an NPC, but never got far with it. That said, hello! Flaming fire witch pokémon! Alluding to being a magic user! Of course I'd like it even I don't go with fire starters.

 5. Fave electric: Luxray. I usually go with an electric in my main group, and I liked this electric type.

 6. Fave flying: Fearow. Going classic with this evolved form of Spearow.

 7. Fave ground: Golurk. Again, don't use ground that frequently, but I loved the idea of having a golem with psychic typing. Also, I found it fun that it could learn the HM Fly.

 8. Fave fighting: Gurdur. Not much to say. I just liked using Gurdur as my fighting pokemon.

 9. Fave psychic: Sigilith. I enjoyed using this psychic-flying type. Another one I used until the end of the story mode.

 10. Fave bug: Leavanny. Aside from Greninja, Leavanny is probably my favorite pokémon, and I've probably drawn this one the most. It just has a pleasing color scheme. I really liked this bug-grass type, and I liked the idea of a tailor and a very parental pokémon.

 11. Fave ghost type: Shuppet. I didn't play with this one for very long, but I liked it.

 12. Fave poison: Toxicroak. I liked having a poison type combined with a solid fighting type.

 13. Fave rock: Gigalith. Another fave on my respective game's team. I do like how the picture for this one came out. The use of the white gel pen helps to add tot he edges of the picture.

 14. Fave ice: Cryogonal. I enjoyed playing with this ice-type but I did not have as much fun drawing it. As you can see, I stopped part way through the picture, pretty much stopping after the "face" was down. Cryogonal is a giant frickin' snowflake, which means a lot of geometry. It was getting complicated to draw, hence the ink lines going off the main part of the piece. While I am disappointed that I didn't go further with it, I am pleased with how well the main part of the 'mon went, and I like how I got the eyes and other spots done.

15. Fave dragon: Dragonair. I've loved the design of this 'mon since the first generation. I'm still annoyed that it goes from cute snake-like designs of its first two evolutions and then becomes a conventional chubby dragon.

 16. Fave steel: Honedge. Another one that is a personal favorite of mine, the entire Honedge line is just wonderful.

 17. Fave dark: Malamar. A dark-psychic, upside-down squid that you have to turn the DS upside down to evolve.

18. Fave fairy: Florgeos. I liked this one, and it fit with the French-inspired locations of XY. I went with the yellow version because I'm pretty sure that's the one I  used when I played the game; that, or blue. It's such a pretty diva.

That's it so far. Only 13 days left to go for this month.

Huevember: Days 19-30

November ended a while back, but I took a while to sit down and scan the last days of pictures. But here they are.

Finn from Adventure Time

Sapphire from Steven Universe

Lapis Lazuli from Stephen Universe

 
Around this time the color matches got a little off. I had pre-selected the marker I would use for each day, although a couple got last minute changes. Unfortunately, the colors didn't always line up with the intended hue. Also, greens are tricky.

Sailor Mercury

Sailor Neptune

Princess Jasmine from Disney's Aladdin

Pearl from Steven Universe

Sailor Jupiter

Aya from Green Lantern: the Animated Series

Peridot from Steven Universe

Swadloon from Pokemon

Oricorio from Pokemon

Coincidentally, the Oricorio was a random choice for that day. The color of the pokemon matched the hue for the day. But it coincided with the theme I opted to go with for December: Pokecember.