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-