Lump

[c_nordlander]

Very good so far, as usual. I like the simple look of her dress.

[kaspired]

Well, lots going on. February promises to be a busy month. Netflix has announced several good shows. "Sword Art Online" season 4, "Kid Cosmic" season 3, a few other new shows that look very promising. But the best? "The Dragon Prince" will be returning also! Yeah! But all that doesn't matter. "Disenchantment" next season is due out also.

Oh and this... as hinted at, the finished drawing for "Last Duet". I tried a different approach.

Pastels! I like pastels, they're so much fun. Plus up-close and personal.

Last Duet 2

Last Duet 3

Meet Kaori, from "Your Lie in April". This is one of a hand full of shows that still bring tears to my crusty jaded eyes. She is a violinist and plays duets with a certain pianist. I don't want to let any spoilers slip but there is one of those long agonizing illness and required death scene. But the final duet she plays is, just, simply, a total tearjerker. It worked.

Where are my tissues?

Last Duet

The other tear jerkers?

Spoiler

Futurama: Thanks Seymour! Monster Musume vol 9 where Lala (who is the resident "Death Incarnate") befriends a girl with terminal cancer. Violet Evergarden, the movie. She got me twice in one movie. And this duet. While the pianist is playing a recital, she is having life-or-death surgery. During the recital he imagines her standing on stage playing violin with him. But I think it's her ghost...

[kaspired]

I'm still on the "Miss Kobayashi" story. Here's my latest.

Kobayashi took the gang on a day trip and somehow ended up at Lick Observatory, on top of Mt Hamilton just south-east of San Jose California.

Why Lick Observatory? Well, the blue Audi is mine. I took the base photo a couple of years ago but never did anything with it. Until now.


First a character study, I wanted to make an educated guess on everybody's height. Then I go and change the perspective so all that work didn't really matter. This is three separate pieces of paper that I taped together and had commercially scanned.

Day Trip Sketch

Un-cropped version of the final.

Day Trip Unedited

Which lead to this:

Day Trip

[c_nordlander]

The "last duet" drawings are lovely. Just beautiful eyes.

I like the character chart a lot, too. Everyone has a unique build and stance.

"Day Trip" looks absolutely great. As usual, you draw awesome cars, and the characters and architecture are excellent.

And since we're comparing tear-jerkers:

Spoiler

For me, all I can think of is Mufasa's death in The Lion King, and Vader's redemption and death in Return of the Jedi (hmm, I see a bit of a pattern here). And yes, I had to try very hard not to cry over Seymour.

[kaspired]

I've been thinking about attempting this for a while and decided to actually do something about it.

This is the very first drawing I've ever posted. Anywhere. (Rewind back to 2008 or maybe possibly 2007.)

Original Idle Hands

That drawing was done on an 8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of printer paper with colored pencils (that was all I had). Also I was dumb. I came from a fine arts background, not graphic arts. I drew her using normal human proportions. It never crossed my mind there was such a thing as cartoon proportions. All I did was stick a cartoon head on a "normal" human body. Back then I never used any kind of background, just white of the paper and barely bothered to sign my name to it.

Away back when, one fateful afternoon I was bored and channel surfing. Guess what I found? My first thought was "Oh, that's that Simpson spin-off." There was the entire group (less the red-haired guy) standing in a room, when a purple haired cyclops walked in, pulled out an axe and proceeded to chop everybody into tiny bits. After I put my eyebrows back on, I was back the next day for another episode.

Fast forward to now...

Idle Hands Redeux

This drawing is done on 11 x 14-inch Bristol board and (only) 39 Copic colors.

Of course the practice sketch:

Idle Hands Sketch

[c_nordlander]

I love the concept of redrawing your old art. Eye-opening stuff. I think the old version was already good (though the hands are very idle lazy), and the colouring is simple but good, but your redraw is much more on-model for the Groening style, and the colouring is amazing. (Interestingly, as with a lot of your Futurama art, I think the sketch is actually more on-model than the coloured version. But they're both great.)

Me, I didn't have Futurama in my country back in 2000, so when I became friends with Graham I asked him to send me a VHS (I feel like I'm dating myself with this) with the first few episodes. The first one I watched was "Love's Labor's Lost in Space", and I was hooked from a couple of minutes in.

[kaspired]

Me, I didn't have Futurama in my country back in 2000, so when I became friends with Graham I asked him to send me a VHS (I feel like I'm dating myself with this) with the first few episodes. The first one I watched was "Love's Labor's Lost in Space", and I was hooked from a couple of minutes in.

VHS? Not Beta?

Oh yeah, super episode! I keep wondering "What if?". What if those episodes were something lame (Yes, there are several) like for example "40 percent Iron Chef". Would we have kept watching? To be brutal, for me, the answer would have been a simple no. Meaning the 'present' would be very different.

Let's hear it for the randomness of fate!

[kaspired]

I've always wanted to draw a destroyed tank. Not sure why, maybe because it was an insane challenge. I spent a week and a half on this drawing. Even picking a good base wasn't easy. I wanted something recognizable, not a pile of debris.

Since the Ukraine invasion there have been several articles written about tanks. One was a list of the world's worse current tanks, the other on "Jack-in-the-Box" tanks. Believe it or not two of the current Russian Main Battle Tanks are on that dreaded list. Their turrets are too small. The small turret limits how much the main gun can raise and lower. Plus the ammo is stored in the same compartment as the crew. Even an indirect hit could cause the ammo to explode (which is very bad for the crew) and blow the turret off. Hence the term "Jack-in-the-Box".

Tanked Sketch

Believe it or not I set a personal record on this sketch: 6 1/2 hours


Some W.I.P. coloring bits:

Tanked Inks

Tanked A

Tanked B

Tanked C

Tanked D

Finally...

Tanked

[kaspired]

And now for something completely different...

I liked Edward! While I was watching the live action version of "Cowboy Bebop" I kept thinking "Where's Edward?" Finally there she was. Just as manic as every.

Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV

**************************************

This is such an odd drawing! Netflix has made it impossible to get screen grabs. Whenever I hit the snip tab the screen goes blank. Finally I had the idea of pausing the show, using my cellphone to take a snapshot of the computer screen. I took the photo, cropped it, and then enlarged it. A lot. And look at that vertical banding, plus the texture in the bands. Cool! I'm drawing that!
How did I get all those million lines? One at a time!
The pens I used had a very fine opaque line, but very limited color choice. I had to use what was available and "make-do".
Sections I like, chunks I don't, but then again this was an experimental piece. I wasn't expecting perfection.

[kaspired]

DA is sponsored a chance to "fix" the Mona Lisa. Here's my offering...

A song by Michelle Shocked, album "Captain Swing" "Looks Like Mona Lisa".

"If she had to do it all over again,
You'd take a photograph,
She'd have a wide grin."

"All that remained was a slight strained smile."

Slight Strained Smile

This face is so iconic. I only had a few lines down and this was instantly recognizable.

Smile Sketch

Then my version.

Smile Concept

The contest was announced on April 1st (April Fools Day) so I knew not to take this very seriously. But me being me I did do some reading on the painting.

There are over 32 layers of paint. Leonardo didn't use lines, he rolled each edge. Didn't matter if the crease was something sharp like a nostril or eyelid, it still curved over. He worked on this for over 15 years and it was found in his studio after he died. Which suggests to me it was still a work in progress. 15 years is a long time to wait for a commission of somebody. If she was say 25 years old at the start she'd be 40 which is a lot of aging to take into account. There is a theory that the painting wasn't a commission, but (wait for it) a self-portrait of himself as a woman.
The painting is done on a wood panel and once upon a time ago it was removed from the frame. Of course the panel warped and cracked. The fix was to mount a couple of butterfly joints on the back which surprisingly enough worked.
The Louvre owns it now and will never let it go. The painting is displayed behind bullet-proof glass in an atmosphere-controlled room.

[c_nordlander]

"Tanked" is amazing, both the b/w and the coloured version (the latter has a great autumn palette). I love how you post the different stages of your pictures as usual.

"Where's Edward": the purple makes it kind of painful to look at, but it's a cool effect, and I can totally see why you had to paint it. Though yikes, that's a lot of lines to paint...

Mona Lisa smile: hah, I remember so many dA members not getting the joke and being butthurt about the idea of improving a classical artwork. Your version is great and funny, with excellent colouring, and generally just way higher effort than the dA contributions I saw.

As usual, you're making me jealous. Excellent work.

[kaspired]

"Tanked" is amazing, both the b/w and the coloured version (the latter has a great autumn palette). I love how you post the different stages of your pictures as usual.

That drawing was a beast! So much detail. As I was working on it I kept seeing more. For example, the tread on the right side is different from the left.

"Where's Edward": the purple makes it kind of painful to look at, but it's a cool effect, and I can totally see why you had to paint it. Though yikes, that's a lot of lines to paint...

Some of the colors are strange, but I had to use what was available. I may try this again but with the Copic markers instead.

Mona Lisa smile: hah, I remember so many dA members not getting the joke and being butthurt about the idea of improving a classical artwork. Your version is great and funny, with excellent colouring, and generally just way higher effort than the dA contributions I saw.

I was kinda stumped on the Mona Lisa. I wanted to do something, but not what. Finally the Michelle Shocked song came to mind and everything clicked.

As usual, you're making me jealous. Excellent work.

Oh you're much too kind.

[kaspired]

I'm about to say four words I thought I'd never say.

I watched "Sailor Moon".

Cuteness overload. Gag me cute. What's worse I watched all three seasons and the two movies. Somebody shoot me, it'd be a mercy killing.

(Quick word on these sketches. I approached these differently. Once the base sketch was done, I grabbed a pen, some Copics and just went for it.)

Sailor Moon

Sailor Mars and Sailor Jupiter

Then I had to draw somebody who isn't cute. Big boots turn:

Sailor Sewer

[c_nordlander]

Heh, always cool to try something new! I've watched like one episode of Sailor Moon in my life, but I feel like I'm extremely familiar with it, thanks to reading Steve's "Simpson Moon" parody.

These all look good: the left hand sketch of Leela is a bit freaky, but I guess that's partly due to combining Groening-style facial features with more animesque proportions, and the shaded version looks great, in my opinion. Rei's and Makoto's faces are a tiny bit sketchy, but other than that, all is great. Your colouring skills certainly haven't suffered from the method you used.

I'd love to have your talent.

[kaspired]

Going back to "Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid"...

These may look simple (they were) but I have a plan for these.

Tohru and Elma on a short sabbatical.

Split Screen Sketch

Tohru and Elma

Elma and Tohru