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something that came to my mind when I thought about making others laugh as a coping mechanism

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wild girl

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should probably post art on the art blog at least once a month, take some cloud practice

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Shortly after that Zanmu drawing, I went on an art spree and made small little drawings of a majority of the current playable characters in Touhou (I've been procrastinating on drawing Aya and Ran) and finally gave myself refernce points for how to draw all these characters going forward! Also, don't mind the change in background colour, that's just me changing the background so the values are actually visible lol.

Artist's Notes;

So the first one I started with was Reimu, and the inspiration for her pose came from this pose reference on Pinterest of a girl doing ribbon dancing, and I thought "Damn, that's very Reimu-coded" and did a quick little Reimu drawing from that.

This was also the drawing where I finally learned what makes a Reimu drawing feel like Reimu. It's the shirt, it's literally just the shirt. I decided to try making Reimu's shirt have a stronger square shape and oh my god it's like I discovered some kind of secret sauce because it just feels so much more like Reimu. I also gave Reimu a tabard and loose pants because I felt like that also fit her very well and also tied in some element's of Yukari's design into hers. I also made her bow look more like a very geometric butterfly as a bit of a tie in to "Diochromatic Lotus Butterfly" and also because I think butterfly symbolism fits her a lot. I also left the hands unfinished because they are not the focus of this piece, Reimu is, I don't wanna cry over how I can't get the hands right and then never get to the actually fun parts of the drawing. Previously, I did some design experimentation with Reimu where I added a little ornament on her obi that was inspired by Yuna's design from Final Fantasy 10 (I can't remember if I ever posted that one lol, also FFX is so good you guys I love it so much) and I like it, I think it adds some fun assymetry to her design that I think makes it look neat. I also gave her some more traditional Japanese shoes (I don't know the name of them so please correct me if you know) since I've seen other artists doing it and I love that look so I added that to this drawing as well.

I also really like how Marisa turned out, I experimented a bit with her body type and outfit, though I didn't really go too off-model with her compared to Reimu. I liked the longer sleeves on her and I gave her a big bow on the back of her apron since I thought it looked cute. I couldn't find a spot for the bow on her hat that looked good so sadly that isn't present in this version of her :( I do like how her face turned out though, since I've also been experimenting with how differently stylized I can make faces in my art. I will always love mangas like Hunter X Hunter that can put two extremely differently stylized characters on the same panel and make it look cohesive, it's why I love the style so much.

I think the crulest irony is not being able to draw your favourite character well while you're hyperfixating on them, but then only being able to draw them how you picture them once they're no longer your favourite, and that happened with Sakuya here. I was initially gonna give her the flashiest eyeshadow known to man but when I removed the layer wih the eyeshadow rendering on it I ended up liking it more without it, so now she's just got some nice bottom lashes. I tried giving her more of an hourglass shape for her body type, mainly to differentiate her more from Reimu and Marisa, and I focused on making as many points in her drawing as sharp as I can. I also gave her some white gloves because I like the idea of Sakuya having fancy gloves, it fits her. To me, Sakuya has always been the most high femme of the main Touhou characters. Maybe this is just because she was my gay awakening, maybe it's just influence from the fandom, but it just kind of makes sense to me. Much like Marisa, I also emphasized the bow ribbons for extra oomph with the silhouette and when I added the red bows and looked at the overall design, I fixed the lack of red anywhere else by just... covering her in blood... I mean she does work for two vampires and she's exactly the sanest person in Gensokyo so please pardon my indulgence in edginess it couldn't be helped.

Youmu was really fun to do but also kinda challenging. In my mind I wanted to make her feel different compared to everyone else I've drawn so far, short enough to be somewhat accurate to canon, but not too childish looking since she never really acts all that childish in cannon and it wouldn't make sense for her to look like a child. I also had to make her look fast and speedy without her looking like Sakuya and potentially avoiding same body syndrome with Aya, who's whole gimmick is speed. In the end, I think her drawing is my favourite, mainly because of the shapes and silhouette. I also really like how I golden-ratioed myon. I also took a few liberties with her outfit and decided to give it some layers to add visual interest. I also like how the cuts in the clothing add more triangles, which adds to the shape language. For her face, I was wondering what to do with her eyes until I decided to just go for the simple, glowing, circular eyes she has in the final product. I was also listening to a bunch of Gorrilaz albums while drawing these (Demon Days is my favourite album btw, idk how basic of a take that is though) and my brain 100% was subconsciously influenced by some elements of the art style (it's so good omg). I also like the shade of green I gave her, though I am a certified green lover so I am 100% biased.

Reisen is where I let myself get a little weird with it, because as you can see, I turned her into an anthropomorphic bunny because she is a weird moon rabbit god dammit, why should she look normal? I was more excited about drawing her IN design than her modern design so that's why she's dressed like that, but I do have a sketch of her in my sketchbook of her modern design. I also had fun rendering her velvet suit jacket. This also helped me tie in some of the reds in her eye and ear, which is also a nice bonus. I also gave her pure white fur to create more visual contrast. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how she turned out, though I wish I didn't shade the legs too much because it's kinda blending with the skirt colour....welp, ya win some ya lose some I guess.

Sanae is also relatively on-model compared to everyone else here, though I did try to make some changes to her outfit to make her feel different from Reimu. First of all, I made her big sleeves (IDK the proper Japanese term for them, if there is one, so again if you know please correct me on this) more open than Reimu's, as well as making them more pointy to give her a different silhouette. I also tried out a new rendering style on her eyes that I also applied to Cirno (we'll get to her in a moment) to also make her face feel different from Reimu's. I'll be honest, I didn't really know what to do with her body type so she just kinda got the "basic slim girl" look in her drawing. I'm not too big a fan of the frills I added to her skirt though, I don't really think she needs them. I'm glad I gave Reimu pants and a tabard instead of a normal skirt because that does help to make the two of them feel different. I also kept her little frog hair clip the same shade of blue as her dress, mainly to economize my colour usage and limit the palette into something a little more tight-nit. I do like how her little hair snake looks though, it's cute lol.

And finally, we have Cirno. I have been a firm believer of "long sleeve Cirno is best Cirno" ever since I saw the art of her in PMiSS because she's an ice fairy, I think it would make sense for her to want to keep herself warm, same reason she has little socks too. Now that I look at it more, her colours are pretty similar to her design in Great Fairy Wars, and honestly I like that, I think keeping her colour palette simple is a good idea so I'm happy about that. I mainly wanted to focus on rendering her wings though, mainly because rendering ice and crystals is fun even though I have done zero studies of them! I also wanted to experiment with rendering her eyes in a similar way to Sanae's, and I like how they turned out! I don't know if I'll continue with this style in the future but it will probably stick around because to me, any stylistically different way of doing eyes is another facial feature I can use to bend the rules of same face syndrome.

While I'm on the topic, I want to mention that the reason Hunter X Hunter's art works so well is because everything is kinda rendered the same. It showed me that if you do everything else consistently in your style (i.e. rendering, lineart, shading), stylizing each character's faces differently will be a lot easier, at least that's how I see it. IDK if I'm ever gonna do drawings of Aya and Ran in this style since I gotta think about them more as well as stop procrastinating lol.

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meow

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splatoon fanart

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a little portrait of Patchouli. her face screams "Remilia forced me to pose for the painting against my will"

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associated quickies of little freaks i like

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target

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POV: the aftermath of the third 8a 2c 8 66 j5a j8c(2) 66a 6c

there's somethin very appealing about the 1-pixel brush lineart style, this was an experiment in usin that (though it took way too long, lack of experience with bgs and colors really hurt here)

also, confession: i haven't played too much of any of the touhou fighters, so i just looked up ichirin's highest damage meterless combo from AOCF for the description put me in FGC jail if you must

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now for your more regularly scheduled programming (bug edition)

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been doing 2~ hour drawins of two photos i liked, from "insane poses" on twitter (@insaneposes) original pictures below, though fair warning of the account, there's a bunch of AI slop and standard blue checkmark bs in between the actually good stuff

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my ass be feelin the seasonal winter illness (fr fr no cap) so back to lazy touhou doodles instead of finishin bigger stuff (that would also likely be touhou-themed)

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ABOMINATION

Of the eight standard schools of magic, there is but one that explicitly interacts with the organic form. Evocation can singe, conjuration can bring forth, but it is solely transmutation that brings true change. To knit flesh to bone to neuron to muscle; to pantomime Alice and became colossal or small; to swim, to fly, to run, to achieve all the wonders of the living body and its greatest horrors, one only need become a transmutationist.

And who else represents the apex of such an art than one who willingly embraces the moniker of ABOMINATION? Cried out from the disgusted sneers of its detractors, cheered by the few willing to look past their monstrous veneer, the ABOMINATION returns it all with but one answer: Their mastery. In their claws, flesh acts as clay, molded to whatever whim and desire they choose. Titanic limbs to strike the earth, chemical cocktails made in bone-syringe-tipped fingers, flesh parting like melted wax as the ABOMINATION adds it to their roiling pile---even their very bile can act as a weapon, melting rock and foe alike.

They are the ever-changing. They are the ever-shifting. They are the ever-adaptable evolutionary predator, and if on the enemy side in the grand arena, you'd do best to remember it before becoming their next canvas.

Character art for a skirmish game I'm probably never gonna publish.

Also, it really should be noted that this piece is heavily inspired by one of @astrono77153462's works, to such a degree where I'd feel uncomfortable without mentioning it. If they wish for me to take it down, I will.

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wanted to try making a comic so made a shitty one

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renderin practice/experimentation

top was tryin an experiment from a jakedontdraw short, wherein you set a brush to randomize color (but not value!) while setting the page to black and white, to show that value matters more in creating somethin recognizable than color, though i kinda fucked it up by doing a black and white photo with harsh lighting

second was trying out a new brush where if i go soft it goes light and go hard it goes dark, mainly worked out well since it made the image take less than an hour, but gives trouble when trying to blend edges and also results in random white specks about so it needs fine-tunin, but we're roughly satisfied

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minoriko pseudo-sketch that i was likin, though to be honest i should've drawn her chubbier, harvest goddess n all (i gotta draw more heavy- or heavier-set characters in general!!) also makes me wanna draw shizuka, though funnily enough i think it'd probably be in a different style