Category Archives: Fanart Friday

Minamoto Sakura Watercolor Chibi Art

I’m on episode 11(latest as of writing this post) of Zombie Land Saga. This is fan art is one of the main characters, Minamoto Sakura.

This idol show is not your typical idol show(most of the idol anime puts me to sleep, the character designs are where my interest starts and ends)

It’s funny, it’s emotional, it’s controversial, it has poor CGI moments — oh wait that’s not a selling point… 💧

Anyway, I had this grandiose image of what I wanted to paint. Sakura in conflict with herself in a mirror. Her zombie self, depressed and giving up, and her idol self, who she wants to be.

Then I realized my skill level and generally being an employed citizen of the world let me know I ain’t got time for all of that. I finished this on a Sunday evening, so lighting is poor in some shots I grabbed.

What do you think? Lol, I’m not sure why I’m asking as no one visits or reads this website. But in case there is an out-liar…

Should you be a full time artist or do art on the side of a daytime job?

Opinion piece~ Yay

*Disclaimer: All info written is that of the opinion of the author and should not be taken as law, rules, even if I am a yarn goddess.

Ah, the dilemma of all artists. Do I make art my full-time job or do I go out and make money other ways and aim to create art for profit on the side?

For me, I do art on the side. I work full time in a call center and part-time in retail. I create art in my spare time, and if it’s something I feel is marketable I’ll list it on my online store.

I love this way of doing things. I used to put my all into creating art for a living. I didn’t do all that well back then. I rarely made sales, has it not been for having survivor benefits I’d not have the luxury to pursue being an artist.

I consume a lot of artist-related content on the internet. Most of the time when I come across this topic I see artists promoting the go full time, transition from a day job, follow your dreams(terrible advice by the way) route. Admittedly they’re biased because they are usually full-time artist themselves.

And I’m biased against the full-time artist. Not that I have anything against it, do you boo. If you’re doing well then go for it!

Here are a few things to consider when you’re an artsy type choosing which life to live.

  1. Do you value stability over creative freedom? Really take the time to think about it. Is the stress of possibly not affording rent because your art didn’t sell worth the time you have to create it?

  2. Are you in a position to pursue a career that may take years to get off the ground? Do you have a stash of money saved to cover expenses when not making money?

  3. Do you have the patience to grow an audience? Do you have an audience? Is part of that audience financially supporting you? Sure likes are fun and all but you can’t buy groceries with 1000 upvotes.

  4. Is what you make even profitable?

I struggled with the number 4 for much longer than I’d like to admit. You see, I do make nice things in my opinion. But not many people are willing to pay for said nice things.

At least not in my local area. As for online, well I lack an audience larger than a couple of friends, even though I have posted my art online for years.

I’m not complaining though. I’m grateful to be able to spend free time doing things that I enjoy like drawing and crocheting. 

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[Fanart Friday’s] Lazy weekend Gaia avatars.

I’ve been rather bored in the transitional period of my life. I have my Mac and my touchscreen laptop with me with limited internet connection(only on my iPhone).

So I kill time listening to music or listening to YouTube videos and playing around with art programs. Open source softwares used include Gimp, FireAlpaca, and Sketchbook by Autodesk for scanning.

Air drop has never been more appreciated. I was able to download FireAlpaca on my iPhone, air drop it to my Mac, then transfer it to my windows machine using a thumb drive. Obviously this is a lot of extra steps that a home internet connection would remedy but I’m in a transitional period.

Enjoy~

Trying a new medium—colored pencils!!!

Colored pencils. Great, portable, coloring tools. A bitch to always need to sharpen them. So colored pencils are “new” to me. I’ve used them in the past. Didn’t really care for them. “Ugh, you have to sharpen them all the time.” -Artist first world problems. The real bitch is when you sharpen them so much they become a nub. No one told me about this! *Cry*

 

Well anywho, that was then. 2018 me decides that I’m going to give into my impulses and buy a pack of Prismacolor premier colored pencils from Wally World. Because it’s common knowledge that all artists hoard art supplies, duh. Some end up getting good use. Others go into the abyss of good intentions. I’m looking at you, Tunisian crochet hook. RIP.

I also buy another sketchbook. Because clearly, one cannot have enough of those. In my defense, I did not have one with that paper or size. My gosh, you’d almost think I was bad with money. And you’d be wrong unless we’re talking about walking by a Teavana. I don’t why but every time I walk by Teavana I suddenly think I have $40 to drop on a pound of loose leaf tea. My wallet disagrees. My heart says who needs to pay bills? That’s what adults do –my gosh what tangent! This started out with colored pencils and somehow we’re talking about tea?!

(Psst.. this is how you know a fat girl is writing this blog)

 

So a few of my sketches were not worthy of an iPhone snap, so they exist in the real world space only. Then I draw this gem, heavily inspired and references from a fan service photobook of cute anime waifus from various anime shows. Mai-Hime, Mai-Otome, Shuffle, and others. An acquaintance of mines gave it to me for Christmas last year.

After drawing that, I was hooked. I thought to myself, this almost looks like an actual print. If not for the obvious sketchbook paper and some lineart errors, I’d say it was printed from the interwebs. Okay, ego you can leave. But seriously, I was uber proud of my work. The colors lay so smoothly and well. The nice thing is, colored pencils are portable! So I can color in class like the rebellious student that no one should aspire to be like! Kids, don’t draw in class. Not the place. (who am I kidding, I regularly crochet in class…)

A theme that I’m vaguely following is fan art. Purely stuff that I’m doing for the fun of drawing it. I do frequently draw original stuff. But I wanted to draw a bunch of Disney princess stuff for some reasons. Of course, there’s a twist. Disney chibis in school uniforms. Sounds fun.

Anyway, here’s a gallery of what I’ve produced so far:

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I should mention that my reference photos are included in the slideshow. It’s obvious which ones they are.

Moe Snow White is moe.

Topless Moe Harley Quinn[NSFW]

Yeah, no nips are showing.

There’s not too much to say about these except—- glarsh I love how it turned out!!

Well, aside from accidentally painting over over Harley’s hair on the side. When will I stop being so cheap and buy a bottle of.. well I can’t remember the name. It’s for watercolor to cover areas briefly. Too lazy to look it up.

😃

Kaname Madoka fanart and lingerie(NSFW)

Hey Homura!! So lately I’ve been on an ecchi, mildly lewd drawing spree. I know, I usually draw chibis. Change. It’s a beautiful, inevitable thing.

`

I don’t know why I keep drawing things late at night as I’m a morning bird. I draw it. It looks super flawless! Then the next morning my facial expression after seeing it looks something like this.

Like what the heck happened to the bottom left boob? It’s like sliced and missing. Yeah, that’s… uh… scary. Nightmare-ish.  Ha ha, let me stop. It’s not that bad.

Thankfully, that error was easy to fix digitally. I needed to add a line is all. I have fallen back in love with making digital art. Woot~

I still love watercolor, and cannot do digital art 100% digitally. In fact, all of my digital art over the past two years or so have bases in traditional art. I sketch it first, then scan it. It has gotten  HELLA easier to color scanned photos using Sketchbook Pro on iPad by Autodesk. I used to have to take a photo, transfer it to my computer, and edit it using Gimp to make it where I could color it using layers. Yeah, a very tedious process. Now all I have to do it take a picture of a sketch and Sketchbook will scan it AND give the option to make it transparent. Nice.

Sketchbook also has a feature that allows you to record your process. I’ve been using this feature for a bit to create speedart. The latest iOS 11 update has a built-in screen recording function. I may play around with that since the Sketchbook app only records the digital canvas itself, not any tools used.

So yeah, Homura. That’s all. I know I haven’t written to you in a minute and you missed hearing my lovely words. To be fair, AT&T had a network outage that lasted 2 weeks. Yeah, 2 weeks of limited internet. None of my devices could connect unless I was at school. You know how I am about work-life balance. I try not to mix the two.

AT&T should compensate me for that unfair treatment with a box of yarn. I would like yellow, white, royal blue, red, and black. Thanks. I know what you’re thinking, most people would like a discount on their bill. Well, I’ll have you know I’m not most people. I’m Aoi.

The curvaceous waifu Rem

Hi, Homura. I binged on Re:Zero the anime during my break off from college. First quarter completed with straight A’s. I’m proud of you, Homura! I loved Rem and decided I wanted art of her. So what better way to fulfil that desire art than to create art for her? So I drew her. Late in the evening. Close to my bedtime. I thought she looked slamming. Then in the morning, I noticed glaring issues with anatomy. “You’re a morning person, Homura. You can’t trust your own judgement at night.”

Anyway, I responded to myself “Homura, just accept the flaws in this piece. It’s neat anyway.” So I did. Here she is. I made her my wallpaper on my iPad. With this piece, I’ve gotten back into creating digital art. I had stopped for quite a long time. Only creating traditional pieces. 

Clearly, she wasn’t the only digital piece I enjoyed making.

Lately, I’ve had the desire to create some animated art. I haven’t  drawn animated art in probably half a decade or so.

Yeah, I know. What a neat way to spend your days off from school. Anyway, take care Homura and have a great week next week. Ace your quizzes next week and enjoy doing art~

Jigoku Usagi(crossover art)

Another fan art crossover of Hell Girl(Jigoku Shoujo) and something else.

In this installment, it is Usagi Tsukino, better known as Sailor Moon.

I am liking this more than Jigoku Miku. Perhaps it’s the moon background.

Anywho, which crossover from Hell will I create next? Mwuhahahahaa– *chokes on leek*

Jigoku Miku(crossover art)

 

A grunge filter makes it look aged. Added creepy factor. 😈
I’m watching Jigoku Shoujo season 4 at the moment. I decided to draw Miku as Jigoku Shoujo.

It’s such a good show.

I’m really not accustomed to drawing my eyes in this style. It was a challenge which I can see rather clearly.

Still I love it. I was eager to use my new watercolor set as well. 🙂

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Behold– a cat girl!~

Because the world could always use another portrait of a cat girl.~

I love how I colored her in greyscale colours.

I’ve never done that before. If I ever wanted to not have colour I’d digitally take the color away, using a desaturation tool on a photo editing software.

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Fan Art Friday’s!!! Lucy Heartfilia Watercolor

So I’m boarding the transfer bus this fine Thursday morning to college. The usual. I bring my sketchbook with no prior plan on what to draw.

While I wait for the bus to leave the terminal I ponder on what I want to draw. I want to search the Pinterest machine to inspiration but my LTE/3G connection is shot at the terminal. So it’s back to good old fashioned brainstorming.

Yeah nothing. No plans or desires came to mind. So I just started doodling a body. Then I remembered the advice of how to draw: Step one: Using your pencil on the paper make some marks.

The idea to draw Lucy came about fifteen minutes later. Luckily I was away from the terminal and could go into the Pinterest machine to search for reference photos.

Moral of this blog post,

As it pertains to drawing, when in doubt– just draw oppai anything.

It’ll come to you. Maybe. Hopefully.

Hachune Miku grows up?! 

*Le gasp*
Such adorable is Hachune Miku. What if she had a manga face?!
Well it happened. Miku has manga eyes.

I have dabbled into using some new watercolor brushes. They hold water, which is great for travel.
Hint, hint, you should get some if you enjoy Watercolor or inking and don’t already own  a closet full of them.

Because everyone knows artists hoard art supplies. Wait, what? Only me? Those artist skeletons are unique to me.

Well then.

Lucoa fan art from Miss Koboyashi’s Dragon Maid 

I love this show. Kanna is my favorite of all of them. “Then why am I reading about Lucoa?” Because she’s my second favorite and drawing that “oppai” is fun.

Lucoa is equally as fun to watch on the screen. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend this show if you enjoy light hearted comedy with super natural elements. Take a break from all the massacres and deaths. Wait, it’s just me that binges of horror and action anime? Oh my bad.

Screen shots from iPad’s Crunchyroll app from my watch time.

Seriously, I’d want this as a wall poster.

The Tama chan(Happy Fan art Friday)

Warning: Semi spoiler ahead after image itself. 


Reference photo




Fan art from series Magical Girl Raising Project. 


How would Tama look when she grew up if Swim Swim didn’t massacre her after finding out her true identity? She’s be a voluptuous shy grown Tama, still digging holes somewhere and hopefully avoiding Swim Swim.

The original watercolor painting will be available for purchase soon. My glossy sealer decided to run out today. How rude.

The final painting has a dark purple background, rather symbolic of the dark anime.

Thanks for stopping by~ See you next Tuesday for crochet related news!

MerGirl Watercolor art(and shop relaunch)

Can you tell who this is inspired by?

Probably. Oh, I tried so hard to hide the fangirl.

Anyways…lately, I’ve been busy with updating and re-opening myself to artistic income. I’ve made some changes since my last artistic entrepreneurship. There are three major changes. One, I’m not using Etsy as a shop platform. Two, I’m not using Facebook as a social media platform*. Three, I’m selling artwork that I draw as prints on various things, like tanks and pillows. I’ll touch on what I think so far about the changes as well.

I have loved blogging on WordPress for a long time. A little while back, I looked into self-hosting I browsed a couple of recommended host plans(by some WordPress blog), all which were above my business budget. Then I found Siteground this month, which has a nice monthly trial(it’s paid), giving me a good amount of time to evaluate if this is a fit for me or not. So far I like it. It’s been a week, as of publishing. I’ve added a print service to my shop. This is completely new to my business model. I learned that there are additional steps involved that I did not anticipate for print services. Call me naive Nancy, but I thought I could just scan it and upload it to Printful. But lo and behold, I  need to use Gimp to scale the images to proper dpi(dot per inch) for better print quality. That takes time as my computer moves like molasses because it’s a dinosaur running Windows 10 I must be patient with my laptop because I also like playing games on it despite its age.  I’m getting used to it though.

Another change is that I won’t be using Facebook’s fan page function to share, promote, etc any of my work. That doesn’t mean others can’t share it on the platform. In fact, if a reader of mines is a Facebook user and finds my art intriguing or wants to tell others about it, I’d encourage he or her to share however he or she prefers to. On a personal level, I quit Facebook in October 2016(it’s April 2017 in case you missed the date of publishing). I briefly considered using the Fan page function during my change. However, I looked at how my page did back then. At the time of the last post before scheduled deletion, my page had 33 page likes. A small number, but the real pitiful number was the average engagement. An average of 3 people engaged with the stuff I shared, if the post got any engagement at all. I believe it’s better overall to have a page(or website) with 10 followers, all who love and engage with your from time to time, rather than to have a page with 579 followers with about 12 people engaging with your content. I am not 100% Facebook free, I am active on Instagram.

I mentioned that I’m no longer relying on Etsy to do shop stuff as well. Etsy did not work out for me or my business. For all of the time, money etc invested into an Etsy shop, I’d be better off building my own website. In July of 2016 through August 2016, I put my heart into my Etsy shop. I should mention that I had my Etsy shop from 2013-2014(I neglected it for self-care and paying attention to life stuff) and 2015-2016. I even used their mirror Etsy shop website builder, Pattern(note it isn’t your own website, it masquerades as one). I was paying $15 a month on top of listing fees. I loathe listing fees. They are absurd. I can’t think of any other online marketplace that I’ve tried out or have bought from(not sold on), eBay, Storenvy, Craiglist, even Facebook commerce, that charges you just to list products. Those 20 cents add up. I’m not saying this to say Etsy is horrible. It certainly has a place for people in the handmade business world. It’s just not a fit for me.

Time travel gif

So onto some futuristic stuff, yeah!!

Things to look forward to. Some former Etsy yarn based products, for example, Kirby gloves, as well as new additions.  The art prints is a new thing, as stated earlier.I’ll dig through some of my artwork, ones that I think looks nice I’ll add as a shop item. As well as new pieces, as I’m drawing painting things all the time. This process will be slow. I’m one gal working on all this admin stuff. If you’ve seen any of my art that isn’t in my shop that you’d like to see in my shop, leave a comment(some places on the web that my work may be spotted are my Deviantart page and via the online community mobile app Art Amino.)

Fun fact!! The title of this blog post was inspired by a song by Madonna called MerGirl. It’s on my favorite album, Ray of Light. Yay, useless inspirations…

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Mermaid Sailor Venus Watercolor 

Happy Tuesday! Mer-Minako  looks quite bubbly and happy~

I accidentally painted her hair too dark. She’s a dirty blonde instead of a sunshine yellow blonde.
What genius idea to add light brown as a shadow color.

Anyway, I’m pleased to announce that I will be re-opening my shop soon. I’ll be adding art prints for those who fancy my work.

 

There’s a T-shirt of

Mermaid Sailor Mercury Watercolor~

Bubbles, bubbles, lots of bubbles!! And Action!

A lot of my recent sailor mermaid paintings are inspired by a swimsuit I own from Hot Topic. It’s the Sailor Moon one.

In this installment, I tried painting hyper-realistic bubbles. I think I failed at it. However, I don’t think they ruin the picture. The picture isn’t realistic anyway.

As for the tail, I tried to paint reflective water. I think it came out correctly. However, as a means of coloring/filling in a tail, it kind of gives off a decorated appearance. Especially without any nearby references.

I made a poster of it using Wal-Mart print services and sent it to a friend(she paid for it). I was testing it out. She told me she was very happy with it and visitors love it when they see it.

This one I added bokeh effects to using an iOS app. I like additional sparkles.

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Sailor Saturn Chibi Watercolor

 

 

Dear mother of pearl! Oh hi there you. It dawned on me yesterday that I can’t find any of my larger point illustration pens in size .5 or .8. I can’t outline in 0.05 or less. So I thought, why not try outlining in the acrylic paint?

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Seems like something to try. Lo and behold, a bit of water and a size 4 paintbrush works wonders. I like the flow of the brush, slightly wet with water rather than it being purely saturated with acrylic paint.

 

Some watercolor has been added!

Hotaru is completed~ I must say this giddiness is more Chibi-usa than Hotaru but I like drawing characters out of character. Haha.

And lunatic charm cheeks~
So I may have gone a tad bit far with the blush. Oh well.