Sketch Diary: Lilac haired digital portrait

I'm late to the Clip Studio party... but man is it sweet. The drawing above was a quick sketch that turned into playing with a bunch of settings and such. It's far from perfect hah but it was really fast and fun. I'm excited to spend less time rendering and more time just drawing and painting digitally. But if you want to see something wild... See the image below! A similar colored drawing that I scanned and then colored probably using the original Photoshop back in 2002. 

with love - M

Sketch Diary: Watching you indifferently color version

This drawing became an experiment in multi-media. I started with a sketch on some old card stock paper. Then I inked it. Then I colored the figure in with Copic markers. But then I did something a bit different from my usual.

I colored the background in watercolor... madness! Not really but it definitely saved me a ton of time. I just wanted a simple orange background and didn't want to waste a ton of Copic marker ink on it. I got really worried though, while I was doing it, because the water made the page super ripple-y. So I sandwiched it in a heavy book for a couple days and thankfully it smoothed out rather nicely.

The stars are bit childish maybe... but I like them. I wish I'd done more haha.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Teal hair elf portrait

So this was sketched in college and colored a couple years later with Copic markers. This was one of the first marker drawings where I started using a color palette more. Nowadays I do little color blocked mock ups on a separate page to try out color combos because that's just not something I can easily visualize yet. It's way easier to just try it out on a small thumbnail first. A lot of weird things going on in this drawing. But as a whole, it still makes me happy.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Orange hair, don't care

This little note card is throwback from 2010. I had all these postcard size cardstock paper things, originally meant to be used material for wedding invitations for someone but ended up not being used. Not one to waist good card stock, I tried out my Copic markers on them. The weird background of the cards (kind of marbled) didn't quite work though and made solid color areas look blotchy. Also, I wasn't so good at taking my time with blending yet. The white you see is acrylic paint added at the end. I don't do that method anymore but could see my self going back to it if I worked on bigger pieces. On small things like this though, it's way easier to just use a nice gel pen or something similar.

with love - M

Sketch Diary: TBT - Marker madness with pink hair

A lovely little throwback marker piece from 2011. I loved doing this piece. I remember it vividly. Sketching it out during my free time at the Jr. high school in Japan. Inking it and coloring it in my tiny but cozy apartment many months later. I remember the teachers that would stop by to watch while I sketched seemed to really like this one. One teacher even drew her own quick version of it as a gift for me. I was so flattered (and her drawing was adorable, to boot!).  There are just a lot of fond memories that come back to me when I see this drawing... I need to stop looking at job boards in Japan. This is not okay haha. Per usual, I used Copic markers for color and white acrylic paint for the little highlights.

with love - M