Stuff that looks suspiciously like stuff you've seen before...

Second picture of a Trigunner with their pokemon.

(I accidentally made Meryl's hair a touch too long and it blurs together with her eyes.  Oh noes!)
Meryl has water and ice types.  At first I was afraid that Krabby would be this awkward red blob in the middle of the picture, but I'm actually really glad he's there, along with other areas of red and yellow, to give some warm spots to the picture.  These are kind of giving me a lesson in color choices, I think.  I liked Milly's a little better, with the pink, yellow, and brown pallet, and seeing this one is kind of making me worried for the next one, since it's going to have a heck of a lot of black in it.  (Vash's picture is last and it's all red and yellow.  It's either going to look good, or it's going to look like the page is on fire.)

Anyway, not much else to say, I guess.  This was done exactly like the last one, with inked lines and colored pencils.

In other news, remember my cosplay prop?  My stun gun?

You know, that thing that I bring up because I have to repair it over and over again?  Well, I think I went to a whole ONE convention without it, and I decided I wanted it back.  But I had deemed it too unstable and unrepairable, so I was mulling over my options and decided we can rebuild it!  We have the technology!  It's going to take drastic measures, though.  The plan is to duct tape the ever living daylights out of the weak joints, and then paper mache over the whole thing, not just to cover the tape, but to give me a more reliable surface to paint on.  (The paint is constantly chipping off the styrofoam.)  Yesterday I did the duct taping, but I might add more for good measure.

So, yeah, that's it from me.  Peace out, guys!

Because I'm an adult, dang it, and I do what I want, even if it means drawing pokemon but not doing my chores.

So, there were some pictures floating around the internet of the Avengers and the pokemon that they would own.  (You can find them all here.)  I thought that was a really fun idea and wanted to do something similar.  Only, of course, there's a certain anime that's my one true love, so guess what characters I used?

I want to do at least Vash, Wolfwood, Meryl and Milly.  If my artistic ADD hasn't kicked in by then, I may do some bad guys and/or secondary good guys.  This week I did Milly and her team.  I told myself it was because I was saving Vash for last, as something to look forward to, but I think, honestly, I just love the crap out of Milly and wanted to do her first.

Milly's an uncomplicated girl, (in fact, she's pretty much the only one in the story who doesn't have issues) so I went with normal type pokemon.  And she's the type who'd love anything adorable, so I gave her a bunch of cuties.  (By the way, the walking Easter egg on the end there is pretending to be Milly by wearing her coat, and the pinkie on the other end is unhappy that the coat is being dragged around and made dirty and such.)  The Avengers pictures gave stories for how the character gained each pokemon, but I didn't bother.  (Although I like to think that maybe the Chancey was given to her by her parents, because it's associated with nurses, and they know that Milly's a bit ditzy and that she's running around having adventures with a guy who's a supposed outlaw, so they're like, "Oh gaw, our baby could be toast any minute.  Take a nurse with you!  Take a nurse with you!")

Anyway, as far as the drawing style/technique goes, I was pretty much making it up as I went along.  I've gotten into the habit of doing little doodles that I outline in pen and then color with markers.  But the markers are kinda lousy because it's just a packet of twelve crayola fine-tip washables (some of them smell like fruit and the black smells like licorice) so they don't exactly do a professional level job.  For this picture, I felt like doing more outlining in pen, but wanted to do a better job than the markers, so I went back to my colored pencils.  The texture that the pencils gave turned out to work really well, since it kind of gives a soft, fuzzy feel, and it's a pretty cutesie picture.  So, yeah, this is the first time I've used that pen/pencil combo and I kinda like it.

Okay, that's all from me!  Peace out!

Legato Drawing

Okay, here's the drawing I did but wasn't able to post last time.

This is Legato from Trigun.  He's not very high of my "Favorite Characters" list.  In fact, he's creepy, sadistic, and... creepy.  Oh, and he's creepy.  The first time I watched the anime, I absolutely hated him, and every time he'd come on screen, I'd point my fingers like a gun and pretend to shoot him.  But the manga gave him a little more character development, and, over time, I've developed a sort of morbid fascination with his character.  What led me to actually draw him was someone on tumblr complaining that there wasn't enough fan art of Legato out there, so myself and a few others volunteered to provide some more.

I actually started this drawing by tracing a screen shot from the anime, and then tweaking everything into more realistic shapes and proportions.  (Which actually was an act of laziness, to be honest.  I could have just looked at the picture and drawn it, but whatever.)  You don't really realize how wonky anime actually is until you do something like this.  Apparently anime characters use volumizing shampoo, because there's, like, two inches of hair sitting on top of their heads.  (And those are the ones without the spikey hair.  Like, seriously, what hair products does Yu-Gi-Oh use?  I want to know!)  And when their head is turned a little to the side, their eyes are still so wide, they're practically on the sides of their heads.  Oh, and their eyes are big and their noses are pointy, but we knew that already.

I had a hard time with his expression, because originally, I was going to give him a wicked smile.  But with his hair across his face, I couldn't use his eyebrows to portray emotion.  So if I made him smile, he looked like a genuinely happy guy.  (No, Legato.  You are NOT a genuinely happy guy.  And if you ever were happy, you little creep, I'd be worried.)  So I changed his expression to hopefully make him look kinda ticked off instead.

On a related note, I took art class every year of high school, and a portrait drawing class at a Vo-Tech, and the portrait drawing class was the only useful thing out of the lot.  I'm pretty sure the teacher was gay.  I don't have a problem with that, I just distinctly remember noticing that he tended to call his students "honey," and the fact that that's the thing I remember the most is amusing to me.  He also had a prop one day that was a skull with pantyhose pulled over it to illustrate the curves and indentions of skin on the face, and he made some joke about how the pantyhose weren't his, he had bought them just for the class, and I thought, "Really?  Are you sure?"  I'm not really sure why I included this story.  It's just that I remember that guy every time I draw a portrait and I felt like sharing.

Peace Out!