Daily Markers 249 & 250: Willi and Ida

I have a month's worth of pictures to scan. I'm still going strong with the daily marker drawings, up to Number 250 today. I wanted to share the last two days' worth of images because I have changed things up. Until now I've used the Strathmore Artist Tiles, namely the bristol paper, which are a 6x6 in. square format. I ran out of the tiles for now, and so, instead of going to get some more of that paper, I chose to use the relatively new Strathmore 400 Series Marker Paper.

Strathmore already had marker paper, but that was intended for concept rendering, such as architecture or product design, not for the heavy application many crafters and other illustrators tend to do with markers. I had order a number of pads of different sizes late last year, but I haven't done any marker pieces larger than the tiles until recently. Otherwise, I'd probably be sitting on on the paper for a while, except for a few finished pieces in the 9x12 or 11x14 sizes. (Incidentally, like many artists, I have a lot of sketchbooks and pads waiting to be used. I need to make my way through my supply.) So, I'm playing with the Strathmore 400 marker paper until the end of the month. A good time to see how it actually holds up.

So! On to the images. Because I'm not sure how the marker paper will hold up to my very messy rough drawing style, I opted to draw the rough sketches in a separate sketchbook. I used a 6.25" x 8.5" sketchbook to do the roughs. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account the size after tearing along the perforated edge, so the original is a little narrower and taller than the final marker page. You can see that in the sketch of the Willi from Princess Tutu. I also left behind part of the arm.

The good thing about the narrower sketch is I can adjust the alignment so it's better centered, although I may lose part of the height. I was able to use the missing arm sketch in the final tracing and inking. I've gotten so used to the bristol artist tile surface that the super smooth surface felt a little odd. Not sure how it affected the inking for either piece, but I'll try to adjust. I used warm and cool grey Copic multiliners. The final rosemary was freehanded in marker.

Today's drawing was fanart of the smartphone game Monument Valley, a fun and relaxing puzzle game. The featured characters are Ida and Totem, a creature that helps her in her quest. As you can see in the rough drawing, I made some effort at proper perspective and alignment. It was a mild success there.

The final piece first had it "inked" with an orange and blue color pencil, which I attempted to knock back with the kneaded eraser. I then used the markers to color it in. I felt it needed to be cleaned up a bit with a brown pen for Totem and a cool grey pen for Ida.

A Gift Fanart

Earlier this month was my birthday. It also happened to be the birthday of an online friend of mine, and I wanted to give her a gift drawing. I asked if she would like anything, and she, like I, is still a big fan of Princess Tutu and especially semi-fanon pairing Ahiru and Fakir. Here's the abbreviated WIP of the picture.

Like always, I did a graphite sketch of drawing, and followed that up by inking with my Copic Multiliners.

After that, I actually went in with color pencils, something I should play with more often. There are flaws, such as how you can see the strokes more than I would have liked, but I'm pleased overall with it.

Finishing Up February

Air Kiss Walkthrouh

For May's contest over at Club-Tutu, the theme was underwater, and was open to a variety of depictions, so long as the characters were actually in the water. After trying a number of ideas, including a pairing with Mytho and Rue, Ahiru and Rue together, I eventually settled on doing either Fakir and Ahiru fluff or a cute Ahiru solo. Below are the pen sketches I did one evening, and put up to get feedback. The Fakiru piece was the one chosen.

KTG Ahiru sketches

Pretty much putting this up for the sake of putting something up and wanting to share. These are some sketches I made before I did the actual work on "Kiss the Girl" last time. As I said, I was anal about Ahiru's hair and design before getting over myself and drawing it. Enjoy.

Kiss the Girl

I have always been a big Disney animation fan, and I expect I will be for some time. Yeah, I will often agree on the digs and flaws of Disney as a company, but its animated films hold a special place for me. Not all are hits, but they generally do a good job with crafting and telling their stories. I've seen Tangled, and I enjoyed it. But this isn't about Tangled, this goes back a ways to another feature, The Little Mermaid, and how I managed to mix it with another animated property I love, Princess Tutu.


Those who follow this blog may notice that a lot of my fanart tends to be from the anime series, Princess Tutu, and part of the reason for this is I'm a co-moderator of a fan group of the series over at DeviantArt. This means we often come up with activities for the group to participate in, including monthly contests. That, and I really like the series. Becky, my fellow moderator, and I had decided early in the year to close out the club's year with a contest where the theme was a crossover with the Disney animated films, so I've had most of the year to consider what I wanted to do. Early in the summer, I made a list of potential ideas for both the announcement image and as a possible entry, including the image to the side of Femio as Emperor Kuzco that was used as part of the announcement image. That list included a lot of ideas that I thought were clever or cute, and a few that were what I felt were "obvious," ones that I expected a number of others would do or consider. Prominent among them were the "Princess" films and fairy tale inspired films, such as Cinderella, Snow White, and, most apparent to me, The Little Mermaid.

For a long time, I did not want to do an "obvious" film and characters, and The Little Mermaid had a lot that increased the chances of it being used by a number of other entrants. The two leads are both redheads, after a prince, not really human, and can't explicitly state their respective loves. So, in my attempt to avoid doing TLM, I considered others on my list and a few new ones, such as flower-loving Freya as the Sprite from the "Firebird Suite" in Fantasia 2000, a young Fakir as Winnie the Pooh's Christopher Robin or as Mowgli with Mister Cat as Bageera, and Uzura and Edel as Pinnochio and the Blue Fairy respectively from Pinnochio. But I couldn't shake my initial idea; thematically and visually, having Ahiru and Fakir as Ariel and Eric just worked, and I loved the "Kiss the Girl" scene. I eventually caved and started working on it.

I did a number of studies, and found a couple of images of the scene online for reference. Thankfully, I have the DVD of the film, so I used that a lot. Amusingly enough, I actually spent a few days fretting over adapting Ahiru's hair from the anime design, which shifts the bangs to the other side whenever she turns her head, which doesn't quite work with Disney animation. Then I realized I only needed to do one angle, so I got over it and worked on getting it to look right.

The images were drawn with a green Colerase pencil, then refined with a graphite pencil, and traced on a cleaner, larger piece of paper to get the boat in a better size. I then inked it and scanned it into my computer for digital coloring. The figures and boat were done separately from Flounder and the other fish because I wanted to be able to easily scale and move the parts so they were placed right.

Then came the fun part, doing the background. This was my favorite part of the piece, and the one I enjoyed doing the most. I believe I learned a little while doing this, and it's one of the few times I've actually attempted a background for a stand-a-lone illustration.

Next came the figures and the boat. One thing I was glad to learn is this scene was one that had flat coloring on the figures, i.e. no shading to have to emulate. I had to make color adjustments because the source scene is actually rather dark and not all that colorful. I opted to include Fakir and Ahiru's colors for them (green and yellow) instead of the original's colors because I wanted it to be them. This was a bigger decision for Ahiru, and I did briefly have dress and bow Ariel's blues, but it was agreed upon on Twitter that the yellows and oranges worked much better and fit Ahiru's character. The fish were easy,  and the adjustments I made was to lower the saturation in the later stages.

Lastly came the effects, and it was my least favorite part. The fireflies were easy to do, and I had no problem doing that. It was the sprays and water lines that were a pain. I got something I was all right with, and the image was done.

Watercolor PT Promo Image

This is the promo image for the next contest over at Club-Tutu. Also an attempt at watercolors. Yeah, I need to work on it.

Sketch: PT "I'll Cover You"

Just a bit of Princess Tutu fanart I drew last night. As you can guess, it was inspired by the song "I'll Cover You" from RENT. I just love that song, and it's my favorite from the play. I've wanted to draw something to go with it, and something to it with Ahiru and Fakir as well, for a while (or at least do a few LJ icons). For a messy sketch, I think it turned out well. Opinions and advice are welcome. I'm unsure if I'll clean this up and polish it or not.

"Drosselmeyer" Walkthrough

Just a walkthrough of piece of fanart done to illustrate a prompt for Club-Tutu over at DeviantArt. It's a character spotlight, and the first character we're looking at is Drosselmeyer. I wanted to do a piece that showed off how cruel he can be, but never directly, and how much he enjoys seeing people suffer. I had done some more advanced thumbnails, but I ignored them and went with a very simple close-up of Drosselmeyer doing the bad guy steepled hands.

It went pretty easily. I simply looked at some designs materials I had on my computer and went from there. The hardest part was figuring out how to do the hands. Quick Google search and search on dA found nothing. Thank gods for a webcam; if you can't find it, make it.

First rough pencil sketch

Inks (Copic multiliner)

Finished colors (PS CS3)

Feed Me!

A pair of follow-up images to "Somewhere That's Green." This time, Autor as Seymour with raven!Audrey II during "Feed Me (Get It)." The first is the first attempt at it, which comes off more Autor than Seymour, and didn't have the humor I wanted the image to have. Still, a good image that's worth sharing.

Below is the final version that I went with and has the humor I wanted. Something about having Audrey II yelling at Seymour was funny to me.

"Somewhere That's Green" Walkthrough

Today's entry is a walkthrough of a piece of fanart I did for the fan community Club-Tutu's January contest. The theme, Broadway Musicals. Briefly, entrants had to take an existing musical (Broadway or off-Broadway, only requirement it be based on a live theater production), and show how it would look with the cast of Princess Tutu as the actors. After toying with a list of musicals that would be easily recognizable and fun (which I plan to return to in the future), I settled on Little Shop of Horrors, and quickly turned to using Rue and Autor for the starring roles.

I had to work out which scenes I wanted to do that included Audrey II in the scene, and while the play does have a lot of scenes with Seymour and Audrey interacting in front of Twoee, I wanted one with punch. The reprise of "Somewhere that's Green" seemed best. Below are the initial rough pen sketches I did to design the pair and set up the scene. A rare case of first sketch coming out best.

After that, I moved to the rough pencils. Followed by the inks (not shown). I fine tuned the look of Audrey II thanks to some photos I found online, and figured out the vines. I think Audrey II pretty much makes the image. Autor, as usual, drove me nuts. Rue wasn't much trouble.

And below is the final piece, colored in PS CS3. The coloring of raven!Audrey II is based on the raven flowers evil!Mytho created to tempt Freya in episode 16, "The Maiden's Prayer," which were a kind of purple-pink.

Another PT fanart progress

Another walkthrough of my process. This was a pinch hit image for a community gift exchange, so I didn't fret too much over the process. It's a kinda quickie image. It's again the characters Lilie and Femio, and this image kinda gets the two across well.

The original planning sketch (was drawn with an H pencil, and adjusted to make the sketch easier to see).

The "cleaned up pencils;" really nothing more than using a softer lead pencil and putting in the more finished lines.

The inks.

The final image, colored in Photoshop CS3.

Catching up on the last month

It's been a while since I last updated, so here's a sampling of the stuff I've been drawing since the last update, with a bit of random process for one piece I did. Very messy course of events.

First, I did this image in PS to practice working digitally, something I don't do all that much and definitely not from scratch, no scanned art work. It was timed at about 45 minutes. I give it an okay.

Below are various Overhill related images. Beginning with some fox studies to get an idea of how to draw Fionn for the upcoming pages; then some very off model sketches of Mullein and Tsuba and a larger version of a doodle that just worked; a more polished sketch of the two.

Lastly, I was working on a gift for Princess Tutu LJ community's gift exchange for the 7th anniversary of Princess Tutu. My giftee wanted fanart, and I initially latched onto her very clear fondness for evil!Mytho with pretty much anyone, specifically with Rue. I was going for an emotional piece, trying to get across evil!Mytho's malice and Rue's growing regret and conflict about what is happening. Also, how no matter what relationship evil!Mytho is involved in, it was not going to be healthy one. The approach was partially inspired by "Dangerous Game" from Jekyll and Hyde. Only I couldn't quite get it to work.

I began with this sketch, done at Dragon*Con, and I pretty much stayed with it for most of my attempts.

I followed up with some sketches of Rue and moved quickly to attempting some more compositions, tests of facial expressions. These led to the image of Rue below. She turned out well, but I could not for the life of me get Mytho to work in the piece. I realized I was focusing so much on Rue's expression that she had pretty much taken over the piece. That, and Mytho is a pain to draw. I tried a few more sketches based off of the videos on YouTube and attempted a few more tries, but nothing was working.

Since the initial idea was not going to work; time to change approach. Thankfully, my giftee also wanted a pic of Femio and Lilie, a crack pairing that has grown in popularity over the last year. I kept the idea very simple, and came up with the images below. Final version colored in Copic markers.

Glory of Love - finished

Materials: Copic pens, color pencils

"Glory of Love" - inked

April Drawing days 22 & 23

Wow, I haven't really updated all month. I have been drawing, just not much to post. I did however have something to post today.

Firstly, I have a quick little drawing I did yesterday. It will be part of a long overdue character meme. It's Tsuba turned into a girl.


And today's challenge image. The challenge was to draw a picture inspired by a song. I have recently rediscovered "Glory of Love," and it so fits Ahiru and Fakir at the end of the series. So, yeah. Here you go.