Painted over summer

An A5-sized painting done with watercolours and... coffee. I don't drink coffee - can't stand the taste, you see -, but I like painting with it. -coffee abuseCOUGH- The white lace is some sort of rub-in sticker I found from a craftstore.

 Bookmark of a troll lady with leopard hair. Oh how I would love a wig like this!

And I finally a painting of Aria and Aeris, my two Final Fantasy muses whom I find to be very similar as characters. I finally ran out of my supply for this watercolour paper too, I used to use it all the time in 2008/2009 when I was only starting out with watercolours, but I no longer like to use it. The way colours blend on it is kind of iffy. :I

Pretty psychotic

See, I had this drawing board bought from Japan which I ruined by drawing an ugly picture on it, but I didn't want to throw it away so I salvaged some magazine clipping and glued them all over it to make a canvas. Then I drew on it with black brushpens, poured coloured inks all over it, made coffee stains, used white paint... And then placed a previously completed and, on its own, totally boring picture of a military pin-up girl to it. There's heaps of criticism towards social media there too, but basically it was a mad creative process on one particularly rainy day.

And then there's this simple portrait of the Queen Of Hearts, who is one of my favourite Alice-verse characters. I love psychotic female characters; I love crazies in general.

This one I had already gave up on, but I went and improved it later. Boy, am I glad I did.

Hello

Oh Goood I'm so sorry I've been neglecting this place, I've been playing around with Tumblr lately but I have to admit I still don't quite get it. Why is that thing so popular? I prefer old-fashioned art blogging, thank you very much.

I'm swamped with commissions right now! And I'm not complaining. C: It's just this heat making drawing in the daytime practically impossible.


Pictures in the next post!

Marker postcards

Two postcard-sized (10x14,5 cm / 4"x6") illustrations done this week. Basically I was just doing these as marker practice, and to test how to make fashion illustrations where characters' faces are not in focus. My teachers often remind me not to emphasize faces too much since clothes are the major focus in fashion illustration... I can't help it, I like pretty faces too much!

Exaggerated necks are fun. And you might have noticed how I love checkered fabrics~ <33

Collages, collages

I've been playing around with all my scrapbooking stuffs again while still sewing my graduation collection. Here's some of the finished stuff I did.

 

 An A5-sized card of Giselle, the main character of Disney's Enchanted. I don't like this because her pose is too stiff and looks unnatural, but her dress came out cute. ^.^

This is Tankero's glamorous character Miss B in some sort of old-fashioned lingerie getup.Her ears turned out to be rather troublesome, as they were difficult to fit anywhere without making the whole work look ridiculous (or, maybe I'm just not quite used to drawing non-human characters).

 A personal work in A4 size. I titled it "Chandelier" because the moon looked like a chandelier to me with the sticker snowflakes hanging from beneath it. I rather like this work.

-off to grab something to eat-

Girl couples in watercolour

An older lineart I finally finished colouring last week. The colour scheme is a bit odd for me and I'm not sure if I managed that vintage feel I was going for, but that doesn't mean I'm not happy with it. The monochrome silhouette on the background is of Paris.

This colour scheme is more within my comfort zone and overall the illustration is filled with my favourite things; two beautiful girls with long, flowing hair, a hanging garden, see-throught undergarments and a shy kiss on the forehead (I find this the sweetest type of kiss, for some reason!). It seems that this work was popular in dA.

Hello readers, I'm back - with a fractured toe! I had a brief holiday in Jyväskylä and being the klutz I am, I fell down a flight of stairs at my friend's home and fractured my toe while doing so. -facepalm- I'll try to update this blog every now and then, even though I don't have much time for drawing these days.

Sketchbook entries

A girl with goldfish and jellyfish. I was trying out colours I don't normally use. Yellow and orange are nice colours actually, even though I shy away from them so often.

I like wedding themed illustrations even though I'm not a big fan of weddings myself. I guess it's the romantic in me that secretly likes sappy stuff. Anyway, I wanted to draw two brides holding one bouquet, but the other one's head is way too small. -laughs- But I like this kind of colour scale so it was a nice little experiment.

Jam day with Sipsetti

Sometimes it's good to plan nothing before you start painting. This one was very much fun to work with, and I really like the outcome even though it was totally random. I wanted to draw jam jars and a cute girl with ruffled up hair, but that's pretty much everything I planned beforehand. Everything else - made up as I went. My favourite strategy for everything.

Sipsetti with lots and lots of jam~ The text on the jars says 'strawberry' and 'blackcurrant'. Sipsetti's hair is actually mint green, but it would have looked too out of place here so I made it pale lilac.

What's your favourite flavour of jam, by the way? I love raspberry and cherry. <3 Blueberry is great, too.

Graceful Lightning

I've been playing lots of FFXIII lately, and Lightning is my favourite out of all the playable characters. She's tough and rought around the edges, but she has this unintentional sort of grace about her. I think it's interesting. She's not very girly, but I wanted to capture her in a passing, unintentional moment of feminity even the roughest tomboys probably experience every now and then.

I should be designing my collection but I don't feel the slightest bit inspired... Ugh.

Pencils and Photoshop 7. Rose screentone from here:

Rose Screentone Pack by *Mysticalpchan on deviantART

Distance

'Though I pursue you
Though I pursue you
I don't reach you
Even though I like you this much'
Nishino Kana - Distance

...That's it. I'm beat like never before. Two straight days of nothing but Thesis seminars left me totally drained, so I'll just share this little sketchbook scribble with you and go to bed. Mine went well, by the way.

This song touched my heart at first listen; the lyrics fit all too well. I can really relate to what she sings about.

Struggling with the White Queen

I've been working on a gift illustration for a while now. Who ever knew it would take three tries to get a satisfactory result? The images above are the first two tries.

These illustrations I did didn't really come out the way I wanted due to various reasons, like stickers not being ink-resistant, too dark colours, just being plain unable to draw what I wanted... I did try fixing my mistakes but in the end I didn't like these two, and I don't want to give away works I'm not happy with. It's against my policy, because I'd feel so cheap.

 This is the very first illustration I ever did of the White Queen, from last summer. Since the other ones didn't work out, I took up this for hints and decided to give it one more try. The third and final illustration is based upon this little painting's design of the Queen.

Watercolours didn't work for the other two, and I wanted to try something else. I ended up on markers - on the left is the inked lineart and on the right what I've coloured so far. I scanned the lines and printed on another paper so that I could start over in case I make a mess again. So far so good, I think. I usually start with the skin first when I colour with markers because it's the best part.

Let's keep our fingers crossed for a good result at last, shall we?

Sipsetti sketches

Sketches scribbled in class today, mainly featuring Sipsetti and a roommate. Chibi characters are much faster to sketch these days, I want to do some postcard designs with them. The 'stealing cookies' one came out pretty cute, might actually re-draw it in bigger size. ^_^

The big picture is the lineart of a watercolour illustration I'm doing, girl couple on a magical horseback ride! I haven't drawn horses since I was 13 or 14, by the way. It was nice after such a while~ I was a horse-crazy girl in my teens! But horseback riding was too expensive, so I did it once a week only for two years. TT___TT I love horses.

You have mail, muffin

More paper-cutting!

Finished an older work just in time for Valentine's Day. I had drawn and painted the girls on a plain ultramarine blue watercoloured background but it looked so dull that I cut them off and glued on shimmery crafting carton. (suomalaiset: jos etsitte tätä paperia, niin kyseessä on siis helmiäiskartonki, jota saa mm. Sinellistä)

For increased cuteness I added some cherry blossom stickers. I bought them from Japan in fall of 2009 and had been wondering where to use them for a long while. It's all sugary and girly, but I like it very much for that. <3

Fun facts: When I showed the work-in-progress to Sadyna last year, she said the brunette reminded her of Belle from Beauty And The Beast. -teehee-

Related Rambles: Mmm... I've never received a love letter but I have given one to someone. A mistake I shall never, ever repeat! I'd rather speak up than give someone a letter nowadays - if only I had the courage to talk about my feelings in the first place. It was my New Year's Resolution to be more outspoken about my real feelings, but confessing that I'm in love with someone is way out of my comfort zone. No can do. What ever shall I do with my infinite shyness...

Scared someone

I had completely forgotten about this drawing that I made sometime in November, maybe. I'll finish it someday once I figure out what to put beside the black shadowy thing. I somehow lost interest towards the end and buried it under various other unfinished drawings. ^^;

She's a comic character from me and my friend's pet project. I don't want to reveal much yet, but she's a nerdy girl who's deadly afraid of vampires for some reason. Then a real vampire enters her everyday life... And hilarity ensues. Her name is Sipsetti. Yes it's a real, old-fashioned Finnish name, stop laughing. Since it has somewhat become my nickname these days I decided to give the name to her. I hope I'll be done with this Thesis thing once and for all so I can continue with the comic~

Red is the Rose...

I've realized that I love anything with roses. You probably have noticed I draw roses on many of my works or cut them from scrapbooking papers. They are all over the place. ^^ I have no idea when this obsession started, but I suppose it has something to do with my tastes in anime and comics.

This is a half-done illustration of the Outer Senshi from Sailormoon (fear my fangirl pheromones!). It's taking forever to complete, but at least it looks good so far. Note: roses again! I personally like Saturn here.

I also like roses on accessories, homeware, fabrics... Here's my favourite rose-shaped earrings and tea cups. The golden roses were bought from a cute jewelry store at the bottom floor of Machida Twins East in Machida, Tokyo, the silver ones from a fashion event in Helsinki. Tea cups and plates found just today from Tarjoustalo. <3 Unsurprisingly, my childhood dream was to live in a small wooden house with a rose garden with someone I love. I also wanted to be a princess, but that's a different story.

Trying out different tools

An A5-sized picture of my Alice-verse White Queen, a character I had not drawn before this. It was requested by another user in dA, to whom I'm doing a watercolour illustration as a prize for winning a contest (I rarely do requests, but I sometimes offer them as contest prizes). I am not sure if I'm giving her this one or another one - I've done two illustrations because I couldn't decide which idea I liked the best. :'D

While the Queen herself was painted with watercolours, I tried a new technique on the background. It's painted with a thick layer of white acrylic and the little stones are attached to it using the acrylic as glue. Acrylic is permanent when dry, so they'll stick to it pretty well.

I had no idea how it would turn out, but it was a funny little experiment. A pain to scan, though, since it has three-dimensional elements...

Invitation card

A small card design I thought would look nifty as an invitation card or something. This was a quick cut-and-paste job again, Mad Hatter drawn on a separate piece of paper and glued to the background. The decorations and text were done with stamps. <3

Yep, still no big, exciting works to post. I'm beat. I finished writing my Thesis last night, but there's still stuff to take care off until it can be officially printed out and graded (I'm really hoping it'll be a good grade, 'cause worked really hard on that thing!). And after that, there's still the other half of the graduation project to do - an entire collection to prepare for our school's fashion show. @,@;;

Ah well, enjoy my sexy Maddy while I exhaust myself with school again. She... rather looks like a female pimp when dressed like this, doesn't she? -shot-

Fashion alienation

I bought new colour inks this week and after finishing the 40th page of my Thesis last night I allowed myself a free moment. I needed a little warming up for next week's design course, too...

Even though I'm graduating from Fashion Design, I often feel like fashion is really difficult to understand and at times it's just plain ridiculous. It's like a theatre play with costumes, make-up, wigs, choreographies and actors. The more I study the less sense it makes. And the current ideals in the fashion world are really pitiable - I find petite girls very cute, but going to the extreme with skinny figures, long necks and tall limbs and who knows what else makes me feel like models look more like aliens than human beings (that being said, I absolutely enjoy fashion photography though). Their proportions are almost freakish.

I guess you all can see how that mental process resulted in this quick little illustration. Models = aliens. 'Nuff said.

More paper-cutting

This paper-cutting mania of mine is just getting worse. To be honest I don't much feel like painting anything because all I want to do is use markers and cut, cut, cut! It's fun to use all these different papers and test different tools from time to time. I think went a bit to far with this one, though. The stamps were probably too much. She's a flower thief, sneaking out of the garden after another successful theft. C:

In the end I'm not sure if this is what I wanted~ I feel like it's too empty on the right side. What do you think? The shiny green paper got all wrinkly after I glued the girl...

Fish lady

I stepped out of my comfort zone for once. I've recently had this growing interest towards the horror genre (specifically video games) for some reason, and when a friend of mine started drawing all these weird fish one night I wanted to try them, too. And thus this monster-fish lady was born. I do have this strange liking for creepy monster hands and monstrous-yet-strangely-alluring characters. -shifty eyes- Maybe I could use her in one of my planned-out horror stories... Coming up with plausible monsters is kinda challenging.

I pencilled and shaded her on A4 copy paper with a mechanical pencil and a normal writing pencil (probably HB, but didn't check). The background was painted with ocean blue ink on watercolour paper. The two were then simply put together in Photoshop.

Sorry if I'm updating rather idly this month, I'm practically approaching the finish line of a figurative marathon called a Bachelor's Thesis and I'm trying to aim high. x___x;;

Cut & paste Neptune

Let's see, Copic White, silver watercolour, watercolour ink, Copic markers, pastel pencils, ink and stamps, rose scrapbooking paper, pearlescent paper.. All those things were necessary to create this little postcard design. I simply wanted to draw a pretty picture of Sailor Neptune/Michiru and somehow it went downhill from there. ^^; Pose is referenced from a mail order catalogue I have.

The process in a nutshell:
Neptune herself was drawn on a different piece of paper, coloured with Copics and cut off using a crafting knife after I was finished with her. Since I don't have any blue-green Copics I simply made her hair apple green and applied more ocean-like tones by colouring over some places with electric blue and ocean green pastel pencils and then scrubbing them with a tissue. Hint! Pastel pencils are great for adding extra glow to marker works. Try scratching some colour off the tip of a pencil using scissors or simply drawing light strokes with the pencil and then scrubbing it smooth with a tissue.

I did splatters with ink and watercolour on both Neptune's paper and the bg paper, then let it dry and glued the roses on the edges, soon followed by gluing Neptune in the middle. For a finishing touch I made the text with stamps (because I think stamp-made text looks neat in postcards). It was a lot more work than I had planned but I really like the outcome and damn, this was great fun to do. I just planned everything as I went.

I really want to do more postcard designs this way! Mm, maybe I should do Haruka next so I can pair them up~ -already preparing for summer conventions-