Digital Art: Chinese Fan Dance

A personal favorite Asian traditional dance of mine. The Chinese Fan Dance. I got hooked the first time I saw it on TV. The twirl of elegant fans coupled with the swirl of extravagant dresses was enough to captivate my uncultured eyes.

At first, the image was pencil sketched based on memory of the dance show on TV. The costume might not be accurately traditional, but I like the design. It's simple to edit with my graphic software. I scanned the picture and edited it in Adobe Photoshop, as usual. Selected the outlines, and then filled the selected area with white wash on a different layer. I tend to keep the original intact. I cleaned some mess I made in the original sketch to get clear lines. Made another layer underneath the line art and painted the whole background with black. The white line art image just pops, doesn't it?

Digital Art: Spirit of Rose

I am completely enchanted by the world of ballet. It started when I was a little kid, just beginning to know about Japanese manga. I came across this manga about ballet with the main character named Mari Saotome. I got hooked almost instantly. Now, I didn't jump ahead into the pond because I knew I would sink. But, I started to like drawing ballerinas dancing, or just standing in costumes.

So this, like any other of mine, was traditionally sketched with a pencil and inked with a pen. Then it was scanned and colored with Adobe Photoshop. The color scheme is red according to the most vibrant of rose colors. Red dresses are so pretty. The shoes are pink, as is the color of most ballet slippers. Unless you're dancing Red Shoes. Sometimes Odile's pointe shoes are black too.

Okay, ballet aside, this is not tampered with layer styles. Only pure traditional brushes and ... alright, I used blur filter too.

Digital Art: Girl in Kimono

This image I dubbed "Girl in Kimono". Or " Kimono Doll". Whatever strikes my fancy. Again in anime or manga style, using chibi or super deformed (SD) proportion which strikes me as cute.

One characteristic of a chibi or SD is mega large eyes. Head bigger than body. Teeny Weeny lips and less detailed limbs. The easiest to draw because I so don't have to worry about the correct body proportion or the natural flow of limbs.

Pencil sketch and manual inking as usual, with digital coloring on Adobe Photoshop. I think the colors are not vibrant enough for a digital image. Maybe I should use stronger colors. I usually like them soft, but this time it doesn't work. Using soft colors, I mean.

Digital Art: Little Ballerina

Aaaaand.... another anime manga style character drawing. The theme in this image is ballet. I call it Little Ballerina because the character is a little girl who dances ballet. And I like this Barbie-slash-Hello-Kitty blue-on-pink color scheme. In my opinion, the color combo has a cute effect.

Not much of technique is needed here. It's just an inked pencil sketch scanned and colored on Adobe Photoshop. The use of gradient fill is never mind-blowing.

Hand Drawing: Victorian Girls

I like drawing long dresses. I can't design a beautiful dress, though. So here's just two girls wearing generic long dresses. With different colors, of course. The lack of background is not deliberate. It's just that I suck at drawing background, so it's left empty and barren. I'm not sure about the parchment and quill. Victorians no longer use parchments, methinks. Oh well, at least it's not a slab of stone and a chisel.

The image is fairly simple, just generic manga style girls with generic manga style hair. At first, it was just rough pencil sketch, then I added ink using black ballpoint pen. Other pens are not as cheap and easy to use. I erased the rough lines and added some colors using colored pencils. As I was too lazy to fill the background, I only colored the grass.

Not much to be said. That's the problem about hand drawing. Nothing to brag about.