Itachi of Gusu Lan Clan

 

It's been a few years since Itachi has moved to The Cloud Recesses and has been cultivating with Gusu Lan Clan and I wanted to do something to commemorate the Lunar new year. I've been utilizing my NightCafe art in the background to give me creative ideas and this one looks like middle heaven. So yeah! Fun fact: 2025 is the year of the wood snake. Happy Lunar new year!

Yo-ho-ho and a Bottle of Rum

 

I'm just about sick of looking at it; SO now's the perfect time to have finished it. Slowly but surely, I'm getting my mojo back. I remembered it helps to have a background (color at least) to use as a reference for lighting so it's not arbitrary and ambient. I tried not to be lazy with it, but I still used some shortcuts. The background is my AI art from NightCafe, which I think was a great idea to incorporate. Overall I'm happy with it. It's more in line with my old works. I wish I was a faster renderer, but other than that, which has always been my top goal, it's not bad. I like it.

Pirate Club

 

The first sketch is the second one. I did it quick, but I slept on it and decided I hated the pose before doing another, which is the one up top. I like it a lot, but I have anxiety about coloring it, lighting-wise. Lighting has always been my greatest weakness and I want to do a good job, so I'm thinking of using some Renaissance classical paintings for swatches. We'll see. I hope it turns out well.

Baroque B*ches (Colored)

 

It's okay. It's better than the last one; I see some mild improvement. Again-I lack the patience at times to give 110% like I used to, but I also expect faster results. I don't hate it.

Baroque B*tches ain't Broke B*tches

 

Cookie. I like where this is going. I want to color this, but I know it's going to take a lot out of me so I'm going to take my time with it and as a result it is probably going to take a lot longer than it traditionally used to- which was no short amount of time. My renders used to take upwards of 8 hours. It did get faster when I was more practiced, but I'm skittish with colors now, so there will probably be a lot of ctrl+z and repainting just to try and get some practice under my belt to get it up to my standards of where my skills were previously. But here is the sketch so I can see my productivity at least. 

Tally-ho! Onward!

Curbside Pickup

I'm slowly starting to remember how I did things, now. I see some subtle improvement here and there and I learned a lot from just making myself sit and finish this sketch. My creativity is a muscle that needs to be flexed. I find myself sitting around waiting for the next great idea to strike and it has happened like that before, but it is a rarity. Most of the time it gets down to just doing SOMETHING- Putting pencil to paper and just going for it and making creative decisions as I go. I've been out of it for so long, it feels good to at least get some of that process back. Also as the first post of the new year (Happy New Year) I want to keep improving as my resolution and even though It's tough for me where I'm at right now in life, this blog, these sketches and this artwork has always served as a type of journal of my life (especially after college) and I don't want to lose that. It's meaningful to me to see where I've been and where I'm at; how far I've come and have prospects of improving for the future. I don't know if I'll color it, as all of these sketches have been relatively small to keep my pen control tight in Photoshop. But I'm definitely proud of how she turned out and I'm feeling better going forward about doing more. Thanks for looking.

Death Valley

 

Oh boy... Compared to some of my older works on Deviantart the rendering is very disappointing, BUT I'm giving myself a little grace because I'm just getting back into it and I did do this fairly quickly. I used to spend 8+ hours rendering any given  piece to the point where I took out the linework entirely. In the end I decided to leave these lines because it IS a sketch. But I would be lying if I said it didn't disappoint without the lines. It's got good bones, but my rendering has suffered quite a bit. I had a way of doing things and I just need to find the PATIENCE again to figure that out; but that is a challenge in and of itself. I know I'm capable of better, so I'm hoping to improve with practice. That being said, I needed to color this to see how bad I'd gotten. I wanted to quit halfway through, and it didn't used to be that way. I'd render all-night until I could barely hold my eyes open and wake up to rushing to finish. I miss those days, but to be fair, my process has changed since then. I always wanted to be faster and so I prioritized 3D over my tradigital methods and because of THAT is why my skills have suffered. So, to go back, into my old rendering ways, like this is definitely difficult. They were always time-consuming, though, which is something I may not have the patience for anymore. So, that being said, maybe I can work at painting faster and I'll catch up to my old technique. This took a little more time than I wanted to give, but I did patiently render it except for the hair, which I left a loose interpretation. In the end I think it was good practice, but I'm nowhere near satisfied enough with it to post it on my Deviantart for example. I used to be much better! But like I said, it was good practice, so I'll leave it at that. Til next time.