Fun_Hi

I dunno. After the MCS concert, and Kyoto, I was feeling a bit down. Not sad exactly, just...kinda tired, mentally and physically. Spent, I guess is the word. All week. So I spontaneously decided to draw Day[9] after listening to some of his talks.

Usually, I put a lot more thought and care into choosing people/stuff to draw, but this one was just, let's do it, no planning, whatever, let's go, watercolors and Signo pens to boot, too.

I'm not even that into StarCraft, his signature game, though I played a bunch up to Brood War when I was in middle school. Come to think of it, StarCraft might have been my game of choice before Magic. Anyway, I only came to know Day[9] from the cross promotional stuff he was doing with Magic for a bit. From there, I'd branched out and listened to his spoken word stuff.

Just listening to him, especially his GP story always just makes me happy. Same with like LSV's videos, especially his Goblinslide video, or Conley Woods and Tom on MTG Potpourri. Their voices just kinda warm up the room. I'm not one for hanging out or chatting or being around people in general, but it's just comforting hearing these guys talk.

And then I found out that he seems to have dropped SC, at least partially due to his demanding job building a new game, which I found out he even more recently quit, and now it seems this was possibly in anticipation of it folding, which it just did, and that all just bummed me out anew. I myself have been kinda down that I'm not terribly excited for Magic lately, not even the new set, Kaladesh, which is just about to come out; I haven't played since the SOI prerelease and don't see myself playing any time soon.

Stuck in this rut, I started checking out some of Day[9]'s SC videos, and my gosh they were great. I haven't played in, what, 10+ years?, but he makes SC feel so engaging. But then I thought of League of Legends and Overwatch and how these are supposed to be huge now (I don't really keep up with any games but Magic), but I definitely don't hear anything about SC, if anything, I get the feeling RTSs have fallen out of fashion. From Day[9]'s videos, I learned he has a famous brother who's also closely tied with SC, and now all of a sudden I'm worried about this stranger of a brother of a stranger who I don't even really know much about. Is he ok? Is SC ok? Are they ok? Are they happy?

Why do I care?

Reuxben

Fun_CadetDeath

道かが世知辛いのか宇宙空間のほうがより危ないのことに関して、心配しないで。
あなたと一緒に私がいないのこと場合だけ、心配してね。
Don't worry if the streets are rough, and don't worry if space is worse.
Just worry if I'm not here with you.

Another experiment in watercolors and digital hybridizations, with narrative implications, as well.

This is the piece simply color-adjusted from the scan. However, I tried something new here: usually I just do auto-contrast/levels, but for this one, I tried biting the bullet and doing it by hand, and I kinda feel it looks a lot better. Imagine that.

As alluded to last week, our watercolor piece this time was on pure pencil lines, though again like last time, these lines are from 2014, but I do actually still like this vaguely Eva/Tenchi-inspired space suit. I wanna say I drew this after a Sukiya throwdown.

Here's the step by step, again using the same methods as last week, though (not pictured) much more digital processing afterward to give it some punchier colors, glow effects (learned from Algen!), and a more worked background. There was more liberal digital overpainting, too, again in that "image-making" philosophy rather than "watercolor-making."

And then some close ups. Good times...kinda want to splurge for the full-set of watercolors now, since after the next piece I did, I realized I'm just a bit limited in which colors I can finagle out of my little starter kits. I bought the three-piece intro "seasons" mini-sets, and while I'm happy with what I can do with them, I definitely need some stronger and softer colors. Though I'm sure a real watercolorist could Jedi-out all kinds of colors from what I have to work with.

The name of the piece, by the way, comes from Benji's nickname, and that "Cadet Death" sounds like "Cadet desu" in Japanese, which basically means "I am Cadet." A pun! The logo I made is inspired by some designs I made for HPB, all of which use the character 本, which means book, but for the purposes of that story was the JP counter for long cylindrical things. But that's another story.

Reuxben

Fun_HeraldGirlSpecsUp

Green like dat moolah you ain't gettin', kid.
Seriously, though, tried getting into watercolors and coincidentally also into actually scanning color work rather than the usual photo snap. To be fair, my camera has repeatedly blown me away with how trusty it is, and I think it might, might be better than my scanner...!

Having always wondered which would win in a fight, I decided to investigate here (scan at top, cam on bot), and the camera does actually seem to be a bit closer to how the picture looks in real life; the scanner shows it a little more red rather than the brown it actually is. Plus the camera seems to be a little crisper...but I can't tell for certain. The main downside to the camera is that I constantly have to battle to capture the image straight-on (hence the varied sizes of the WIP shots) and properly lit (since all the light around here save my tiny desk spot light and my giant window during daylight hours tends to be more yellowish rather than white).

Anyway, today was really all about testing out watercolors (and color pencil touch ups), and fortunately I had an old piece inked up already, so I could cut straight to the coloring. And further fortunately, I diligently photographed the steps so I can "rewatch the tape" later to see what I did myself. I did watercolor earnestly a while ago, but kinda forgot whatever I managed to learn, though it's now coming back to me.

So these are like research notes, I guess: I started with gently layering in the tones I wanted, and placing in light-to-dark in the usual circular weavings and soft swipes for larger areas and subtler incorporation, and then used my waterbrush dealio to work the colors together piece by piece. I'm going mainly off of instinct since I don't have Internet most of the day, so hopefully this is in the ballpark of proper watercoloring.

And then I basically just repeated that process till all the colors were in. I then went over like Eisaku with some color pencils to bring some warmth/balance to the colors, and finished everything off with white Signo highlights. I should note that the line inks were with my G-Pen, so I noticed they can run into the colors a bit. My next watercolor piece was on just pencils, and it came out quite a bit cleaner, as expected. After that, I have to test my Signo .28 and my Copic and Micron pens, too. I assume the Signo's gonna get gnarled up. Wonder if Copic markers are wise...I'm sure there's some chemistry involved here I should be aware of.

Also worth mentioning, for the final PhotoJam, in the spirit of study, I embraced the concept of "image-making," so I touched-up the piece quite liberally in Photoshop, including moving some stuff around. I used to think this was something like cheating, but if I consider it not a watercolor piece, but an image I'm making--that is, a collection of pixels to display online--then I would like to see what I can make of it if everything on the paper was simply the base layer, like pencils to inks. Or paper to pencil! Taking the production further, I also used a KNKL-informed gradient maps and other effects, too, including some over-painting.

I feel like I learned a lot on this piece, even it isn't that great to look at (the date says I drew this two years ago!); the mechanics involved were quite worthwhile and I'd easily be down to give the image-making flow another go.

Reuxben

Fun_FaezOne

And the final for our little experimental exploration into fine watercolors.

4/17/16

Reuxben

Fun_Colorfool

Trying the G-Pen over some old watercolors again.

4/16/16

Reuxben

Fun_USAUSAUSA _I

More from my old sketchbook find. I couldn't just put my inks back, so I thought I'd try to give this one some refinement.

Secretly seeing how using just the G-Pen and the Maru pen would work on a piece, to see if I could conceivably ink my comic with just these two and no Microns since the whole losing my regular ink kit on the train situation. Could buy a replacement, but I'd have to take a two hour train ride to get to my usual spot and would love to see if I could be able to be exclusive on G- and Maru if possible.

4/15/16

Reuxben

Fun_USAUSAUSA

Found a photo of an old watercolor painting I did in '14, Fourth of July-themed.
I remember painting this in a Sukiya. I used to camp out there while eating the Mega Cheese Curry (thing is yuuuge), and after missing the last train home one night, I eventually discovered I could use that place as a sub-1000-yen hotel! Just buy whatever you want and you can literally spend the night there since it's open 24 hours! I later would use this sick tech during prerelease marathons rather than make the commute each day.

In fact, here's how you hack prerelease marathons in Tokyo: just hit the FNM leading right into the midnight prerelease (there's usually about an hour after FNM to eat at the local 7-11 or Family Mart before the midnight event), then jam the midnight until morning, then ride around and sleep on the train for a couple hours before the morning's Day 1 (I recommend getting onto the Tozai Line and riding that full circuit up and down since it will lap right back to Takadanobaba just in time), hit up the Saturday prerelease by no later than 30 min before doors, then when the day ends you pop over to Sukiya for a bite and a sleepover, get your boot back to the Sunday prerelease in the morning again by 30 prior, and then by the end of day 2 you're back on the train headed home like you just pulled off a heist. A reeking, stinky, sweaty heist. Don't forget to pack your infinitely futile Japanese deodorant. But it will do you no good, naive child.

Japanese deodorant burns and burns and burns, but it, like goggles, does nothing.

4/7/16

Reuxben

Fun_Maku

I literally have to see if I remember how to do this.
Exhausted after losing horrifically at FNM, I missed my stop coming home because I fell asleep on the train. My options were to wait in the open-air station with the bums and bees until the first train at 6am, grab a six minute and 4,000 yen cab, or camp out at a 24 hour McDonald's until train time. Fortunately I had my art kit with me as always, so I chowed down to some long-lost McCheeseburgers and McFly's, hoped I wouldn't have to pee or poo for the next several hours, and camped out while coloring this and listening to Kyary Pamyu Pamyu on my dying phone.

Made it back in One Piece.

(Today is 8/16/14)

Reuxben