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

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-

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...

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-

Sailor Moon + markers

Made this A5-sized marker illustration today while listening to Ayumi Hamasaki's Love songs album. I ordered it a few days before Christmas, and it arrived today. Inspiration come my way! <3 The packaging, booklet and songs are all so beautiful. Must be my favourite Ayu album since (miss)understood and Secret. I've loved all her work so far, but this feels so nostalgic and familiar.

Anyway, since the album is such a prize and booklet pictures very pretty, I drew Sailor Moon in front of a mirror just like Ayu in one of the pictures. The pose went haywire but I'm happy with the colouring! I've had problems with Copics since forever but I think we've achieved some sort of mutual understanding now. Also! Roses cut from scrapbook paper. -loves-

Attention: these other two are not quite work-safe. I have been reading Sky Doll lately and wanted to draw Neo-Queen Serenity in a dress similar to Agape's. Her breasts look like balloons, it's quite freaky... I'm more a fan of small breasts if I'm completely honest. Also, the other one is obviously porn work of Seiya (Sailor Star Fighter) and Sailor Moon, a pairing I like very much. Um. It was a marker practice, honest. Kinda. Sorta. An excuse to draw as much bare skin as possible? XD Sigh, no one's going believe me anyway, so why bother? I just love Sailor Moon's blushing face, she looks so cute. I wish Naoko Takeuchi had shown her more often with her hair undone~

These were all drawn on my new marker pad. I can't stand those really thin marker papers, they always get wrinkly when I try to draw on them. This one is much better. It's Letraset Cartridge Paper (Heavyweight), 270 g/m2. Ah, how smoothly the colours blend on this paper! I think I'm in love, haha.

More supervillains

Only this time it's my original characters, Toxic and Doctor Love (yes, I gave them as cheesy villain names as possible. It's a parody, after all!). I had fun working with markers again, but my scanner unfortunately couldn't andle the outbursting pinkness of Love's hairdo. I like this one very much.

Characters done with Copic and Neopiko markers on size B5 marker paper and framed with a gold pen. Background is scrap-booking paper I scanned before in high-res and now cut-and-pasted on this work. In other words, all the materials are traditional but just brought together by Photoshop (because cutting the paper into that exact shape is quite challenging).

Superheroines

Lately I've been getting into this superhero thing a bit more. I have friends who love superhero stuff (comics, movies, tv-series and whatever they have these days) but I've never really been into that genre. All those ludicruous muscles, silly spandex costumes and super powers and saving the world from evil supervillains just doesn't get me. I did like that old Spiderman animation as a kid, though.

Somehow I've still managed to get into this hero thing lately, maybe thanks to my friends' hyping or the fact I've stumbled upon some wonderful, wonderful artists on deviantART. Then I got inspired and drew an OC of mine whose story is more or less a goofy superhero cliché parody anyway, so the role fits her. The finished and inked lines are on the right. -->

I'll admit that she was hard to draw as she needed to have some muscles and not be that cute and round-shaped like my girls usually. It's a nice break from my usual stuff if nothing else (and I'm super hyped up about colouring this, I can't wait to get my paints and get ready to rock). I really needed a break from all those Alice-verse illustrations...

I want to do more dynamic heroines now~ Maybe some Final Fantasy heroines (I know my little brother would approve of this) and the girls from Sailormoon are more my kind of thing if we're talking about heroes. <3 I really want to try drawing some supervillains too! (Well, namely Galaxia...)

And then on the left an older Copic sketch of another heroine. She was just a random character I drew to practice this kind of pose, but my idea was to draw something like an electric fairy or elf warrior. As I said, it's an old sketch so I don't remember clearly. Still, I though the illustration was too nice to waste so I wanted to share it with you gys here.

Who knows, maybe I'll re-draw this on watercolour paper someday and make a full illustration of it now that I found my very favourite watercolour pad again (the one I drew that red Alice/Hatter picture on? I thought I had used all the paper already but then I found some more upon cleaning my room).