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.


I went into this picture of Xeneas with the intention of recording some of my steps for how I did it.

 

I started this piece with a color pencil drawing. I've already knocked back some of the lines with a kneaded eraser rolled over it, but I remembered to scan before I did the whole thing. I probably could have softened the sketch more, but I guess it was enough. 

 

 I then added the main base colors and shadows to the head, antlers, and neck.  I followed the original artwork and added shadows to the blue base of the antlers and under the head. The rest of the head didn't seem to have much variation in the source image, so I didn't add it here.

 I've added the gems to Xeneas's antlers and started adding some shadows to the horn-like parts of the antlers. I had to figure out what markers to use to achieve the gem colors and how to use them. I used a darker color around the edges that indicated a turn or merging to the larger antlers. For some of the gems I did go back over the darker color with the lighter to help soften the look.

And the finished piece. I added black lines first with a Copic 0.2 SP multiliner, then refined with a 0.35 before going over the external lines, as I have with most of the pieces, with a 0.7 (some pieces were hit with a .0.5 or 1.0; either way, a really thick line). I did have to go back over the antlers with a different yellow to help the shadows stand out. I then added highlights with a white gel pen and added some white color pencil to the gems to help lighten them and add depth.

And that's the process, sans the white color pencil, that I normally use for many of the pieces I've done this month.