Welcome to another new segment for my blog: Pachi Particulars! In these segments, I will display multiple sketches I've worked on recently that I don't have any topics to blog about with. Instead, I'll talk about the pictures themselves and how I was inspired to draw them - what's usually the smaller portion of a more constructed post will be the full portion of these posts. You can find all of these pictures on my Art & Sketches page as soon as this post goes live. I hope you enjoy them!
I've been wanting to draw this one ever since the "pool" update. I actually began work on it before the pool post was finished, and (fun fact!) this image was originally going to be part of that post. I was going to declare that Masashi was the "star/representative" of the update, because in my story he carries a theme of water. It's sort of like energy to him, let's leave it at that. I had my own water theme going in my head, but I decided that was too hokey and didn't really make sense, so I came up with the idea for these all-purpose image dump posts.
What I aimed for here was Masashi displaying his "attunement" with water in a pose I had never done before. So I went for "arms crossed part-way; extending towards the viewer". The arms were very difficult, as were the hands - countless times I redrew them, trying to scale them right and not make one look longer than the other. It's quite a challenge for me to draw objects concealing other objects, especially when that object is a human body part. If you erase a mistake there's a good chance you'll accidentally erase another part you already had perfect.
If you have that problem when drawing with pencil, try what I do: divide and conquer the entire process. When you're absolutely sure you've gotten a portion of a drawing just the way you want it, and there's no way any other element of the drawing will affect it, go ahead and make that portion permanent with your pen/marker/whatever you use. You need to be REALLY sure before you do this - if there is something overlapping that portion, make sure that overlapping part is done first. You can always use white-out later if you really want to change something, but white-out ruins the quality of the paper in my opinion, and then what you draw won't look quite right. I think that scenario should be avoided if at all possible. There are always exceptions, and sometimes it's better to draw the entire picture before you finalize any lines. For me, the deciding factors are the number of overlapping portions and the difficulty of the portions. Experience, naturally, will show which methods work best for you.
A small note: his shirt says "UM". I mirrored it because I wanted something more imaginative than just letters. And it's also kind of like being mirrored in the surface of water, just like..........yeah, like I said, themes.
Still, I have to say it - that doesn't look like water. I tried to be creative and draw water in a way that would be easy to draw but still look like it could be water. But I think it looks more like an amoeba, don't you? Either way, it looks neat.
~~~~~~~
This big guy is another in a long line of characters from my story that I am drawing for the first time recently. All I had really established about him is that he's big, he's slow, he likes to carry around big weapons, and he's heavily armored. Think of him like a guard for a high official. A fantasy high official maybe, but hey, my story is a fantasy.
I realized right away in drawing him (his name is Boris, by the way), that I have NO clue how to draw armor. I don't always look at reference images when I draw either, and this was done on a night when I did not. So I just threw a bunch of shapes together in different patterns. He's supposed to be imposing and dangerous, but his armor design honestly makes him look rather comical. The only kind of reference I used for any of the armor is his helm. I designed it loosely after the iconic samurai headgear, but with little to no intricacy. The breastplate, codpiece, and knee pads are all one big piece that when put together resemble an easter egg. I find that funny, at least. And all I can say about the footwear is that shoes are easily the toughest clothing item for me to draw, believe it or not. I seem to default to spike shapes when I don't know what else to do.
Despite all I said above, I do like this picture - I wouldn't be showing it to you otherwise. Even though Boris didn't come out quite like I picture him in my head, the drawing itself was fun to do. It was a good opportunity to practice varying texture and intensity with a limited range of drawing materials.
~~~~~~~
This is silly little Ako; she'll most likely appear in a future Pachi Profile segment. I drew this image because I wanted to see where I was at in drawing school uniforms. The uniform here isn't modeled after any particular uniform in any particular series. I say this because I based this uniform after a uniform I had done in a drawing from several years back - and I don't remember what the model was for that image. So we'll just call it the generic school uniform.
The drawing has a simple concept: draw Ako being silly. Drawing Ako is not at all like drawing Suunuku, however. Suunuku is more of a hardened, developed personality, with more rounded and nuanced features. Ako is of a well-mannered, spunky schoolgirl; she's an ordinary person, unlike most of the tough fighters I draw. She's delicate and dainty, and as I've learned, I don't do dainty well. The majority of my drawings involve big strong characters clenching their fists or showing off muscles, so I'm more akin to drawing thick, meaty lines. A sketch like this requires you to draw as simple and cleanly as possible, and it's probably the main reason I don't do this kind of drawing often.
Despite that, I'd like to take a shot at images like this more. It feels good when I have the opportunity to expand from my norm. It can be very frustrating, but in the end it's refreshing even if it turns out bad. Sometimes you have to take a break from all the big tough guys. In terms of this picture, I really enjoy drawing skirts too, even though I have such a tough time with them. It's a lot of fun thinking up the different ways they will billow around depending on the character's pose. Capes are like that for me too - anything that billows around in varying patterns is awesome.
~~~~~~~
Ladies' man Mikioi seen here, keeping his body in tip-top shape. I got the idea to draw this from memories of the campus gym during my college days and how fun it was to go there. Pretty much any of my characters would fit right into a gym setting, but I chose Mikioi because I once wrote a short story with him, in which there is a prominent scene taking place in a gym. So he naturally came to my mind for this.
The hardest part of this image actually wasn't Mikioi himself. After some issues with getting him to face the right way and figuring out how to properly space him with the punching bag, his pose came together rather naturally. I still feel like my bare male chests appear to be "painted on" more than being part of the actual body, but it's not that bad here. The hardest part turned out to be the contents of the gym. When I started, all I had planned was Mikioi and the punching bag. After they were complete, I spent a whole day wracking my brain trying to think of how a gym would look. I went with a tile floor even though a gym would usually have mats because I wanted to have more substance in the image - and a tile floor jumped out more to the eye.
Here's an interesting note about this image. Usually when I prepare images for this site, I do some routine clean-up work on my computer after scanning them in. Sometimes there will be smudges or stray lines, for example. For this image I decided not to do the clean-up phase because I think it actually looks better kind of grungy. I started to clean up the smudges on Mikioi's face at first (Mikioi's face almost always gets smudges because his face uses a lot of thick black lines), but quickly realized that his face looked too clean for the tone of the image. He's working out - he should be dirty and sweating, so it works. It just goes to show you - you never know what you can use, or NOT use, to give your art an extra kick (or punch, in this case). ;)
