While I’ve long since given up on making a career of it, I sometimes enjoy creating art. I especially like to make fan art of anime series and video games that I enjoy. I recently invested money in some Copic markers; for those who aren’t familiar, they’re alcohol-based markers that are considered to be very high-quality. A lot of Japanese artists use them. I’ve wanted a set for years and they were recently on sale for Memorial Day, so I grabbed a set.
Sometimes I have trouble coming up with things to draw, though. Inspiration comes in fits and starts with me, and it’s difficult to predict when it will strike next. Because I wanted to get some use out of my new art tools, I sought my inspiration from friends on Twitter. Below are the requests and my responses, as well as a “bonus item” that I came up with on my own. All the drawings are created using Copic markers, Copic multi-liner pens (in several different colors), and Sakura Pigma Micron pens (black), along with the occasional highlight using a Sakura Gelly Roll white pen, on Bienfang Bristol drawing paper. I messed around with some of the levels in a photo editing program to attempt to best capture how the colors appear in real life. The first four drawings are about the size of an index card, while the final one is on a full 9″ x 12″ (23 x 30.5cm) sheet.
Note: The final image may be NSFW, because it contains very mild non-detailed nudity.
Because this is a pixel-art character from a video game, I found that there were a lot of different interpretations. I sought out some reference art on Google images. because I prefer to draw cute things, I chose to go more that route rather than the more “hard-core” style that seems to be the norm for some of the later games in the Sonic series. Honestly, I’d kind of feel bad stomping on this little guy!
This was kind of an amusing request, because the anime club I attend just got done watching Evangelion. I think many of us just want Shinji to find his joy, so it was kind of nice to draw him looking as though he isn’t carrying such heavy burdens. I definitely have to work on drawing animals, though; this has always been a problem for me.
One of my IRL friends knowing exactly what kind of goofy crap I’m into 🙂 I think this is one of the best running gags from the Nichijou TV series. Even though the execution of this request was pretty simple, it brought back memories of a comedy that I really enjoy.
I liked Jack’s request because it was just open-ended enough that I could be a little creative. It’s Anthy Himemiya (in her end-of-series outfit) holding a bouquet of lilacs (they’re in bloom at the moment here and I love their smell, so I thought it worked out well). I’m seeing some anatomical weirdness in this one in particular (her right arm, yeesh), but I re-sketched the pose several times which ended up causing some of those issues. I’m happy with the colors, though.
And, for a bonus item, here’s a little something I drew for myself:
I’m big on Final Fantasy 6, and decided to draw an interpretation of Terra in her esper form. A lot of the artwork I see of her is really waif-ish (obviously very inspired by Yoshitaka Amano’s original character designs), but I wanted to draw something more powerful and and sort of demonic, and I suppose also muscle-y. I’ve been trying to get away from drawing characters using a standard, very skinny body type when I can; I’d rather challenge myself by attempting to capture some of the variety that exists for human bodies.
Anyway, the anatomy isn’t perfect by any means, but I’ve been trying to do some different, more dynamic poses lately, so I’m letting myself make a few mistakes in the process. Mostly I just loved being able to use so much pink!
I’m down for doing this again; follow me on Twitter and maybe you’ll catch me asking for requests!