Mirror Image

Posting something new on here? Unthinkable O__O

Just a random piece of art I did when I was kind of in a weird mood. Once again, I didn't know what to do with the background. Tried a few things, didn't like em.

A bit of story, I guess: Alex is a person who for the longest time felt like her outward appearance didn't match with how she wanted the world to see her. She basically saw a different person in the mirror. She probably looks a bit older here than she was meant to be. Might try to edit that at some point.

A simpler coloring style?

I've been practicing some other coloring styles lately. While I really like how the inkless painting style looks, it does take a long time, so I experimented with a more cell-shaded technique. Inking in black is still not easy for me (shaky hands means multiple erases and re-dos), but it allows me to fill colors in quicker. Still not really sure how I feel about it...probably needs more contrast between the shadows and the rest of the colors.  

Also...background techniques continue to elude me >_<

(A note about Alex's hair...this is a very short-lived style that was not her choice at all.)

Has it really been so long??

WOW, it's been a long time (9 months??). Finally trying to get back into doing some art, so I dug out a couple old pieces and finished them.

The first one is quite a bit older than the second; done during a period when I wasn't too keen on inking at all. I tried to add a background on, but with the lack of inking I couldn't make the figures stand out. I think the expressions are pretty good, but the anatomy could be better :/ I have a problem with head size, most likely because of how many years I spent not really drawing people with human proportions...

Anyway, it's meant to be Raina and Alex during a period pretty early on in their relationship. Things are pretty rocky for them for a while. 

Been toying with Alex's design lately...I really want more of a contrast between her hair and skin color (darker skin, paler hair), and I changed the way her earrings look. 

This one is fairly recent, done with the help of a reference (though still not the best anatomy-wise). Because of the heavier inking on it, I was able to do a textured background/lighting experiment on it which I think looks okay :) Really trying to work on the backgrounds lately.

Raina's lack of self-confidence is one of her biggest weaknesses, and Charlie is a big factor in helping her overcome that. The image is a dancing lesson that turns into a bit more than either of them bargained for XD.

Angsty painting

Well, it's been a while.

I hesitated about putting this one up, because I started it on a day when I was feeling somewhat down, and finished it today, while I'm feeling very down. And that definitely shows.

Sketched this entirely on the computer with very little actual inking (I haven't had the patience to do that lately). Couldn't find a reference image that fit the pose I wanted, so I came up with it out of my head...seems a bit stiff to me and the proportions are off I'm sure. Oh well.

Not much else I want to say about it right now.

Outfit Design #3

This is probably the last one of these that I will do - Gregory and Alex's formal guard uniform (for the banquet and other events). I tired myself out after the close-up view (took me all night X__X), so I didn't get around to the full-body view like the other two :/

I really wanted to show these two in sort of a "bro" moment, since they do have quite a strong friendship (didn't really think about how much time it would take to do them both, though!) 

Got to figure out a quicker way to shade faces! 

Outfit Design 2

Still don't much feel like doing art, but I forced myself to sit down and do _something_ today, just to keep up with it.

This is another outfit design for the autumn banquet, this time for Alisha to wear. While she is nobility, she doesn't like to acknowledge that side of herself and instead prefers practicality. Because of that, what she wears isn't as fancy as Raina's wardrobe. I think that part came across pretty well in this, though I don't think the colors fit as well here as they did in my head (I may have to do some tinkering with that).

The other thing that's been bothering me is how difficult I'm finding it to keep faces consistent, despite having made facial references to use. Practice, practice, practice, I suppose :/

Outfit design

This will be a somewhat short entry - it's late and I'm pretty tired, but I just finished this art so I wanted to get it up here.

This was an attempt at designing a gown for Raina to wear to the autumn banquet (an event that ends well for pretty much nobody XD). I will be the first to admit that I'm terrible at designing clothes, so for this outfit I referenced one that I found online a long time ago - I feel pretty good about the end result, actually. I have outfits in mind for the other characters as well, but we'll see how well I can get them down XD