#It's actually been a really refreshing and overall happy process so far and I'm happy to share these small bits of it hehe

[reksink]

Furred Attempts at One's Self

[sae-midori]

hullo! I hope you're having a good week! I really like your art, and I was wondering how you paint water! If it's Ok, can you tell us how you paint water (especially when it's reflecting something), please?

Thank you so much for the lovely compliment! I hope your week's been wonderful too! 👋🌸 Haha, water is a tough one isn't it? My process for drawing water is ever-evolving, but I'm happy to share some solid insights I've learned along the way:

There are two main ways I approach water reflections in my nature scenes. The first is the more open brushy method you see in the painting below. I simply take one of my textured ink brushes and 'boop' it in my scene with a quick dabbing or stamping motion.

While this approach doesn't create an exact reflection, it's a much more impressionistic one I like to use for large bodies of water or for water that's actively moving. The water in this scene is a river with lazy eddies and shimmering light qualities. So by booping my textured ink brushes here and there, I can easily and quickly capture the feeling of flowing reflective water. Below are the two major ink brushes I used for the autumn tree reflection. They already have a lot of built-in ripply texture to them, right? So a few aptly placed boops underneath the autumn tree not only gives me a nearly instant reflection of the tree's red leaves, but it simultaneously makes it feel like the water itself is gurgling away with slow moving ripples - just like a river should! 💙

The second approach I use for drawing water is the old "draw it once and flip it vertically" tactic, haha. I use this approach when I'm drawing water that's very calm and undisturbed with a near perfect reflection. But even then, I won't flip every single rock and tree in the scene. I'll only flip key elements at the center of attention in the artwork, like this snowy rock you see here:

With the 'draw and flip' method, I always make sure to take little eraser bites out of the reflection itself or add a few streaks of water across it to help the flipped shape blend in with the rest of the scene. Most of the time I will actually use a combination of both approaches to make my nature scenes:

Here you can see the booped ink brush approach being used along the river bank, while the smaller rocks off to the right-hand side use the 'draw and flip' method with some ink brushing atop it to smooth out the effect. By using both methods here, I've created the rough impression of rippling water moving closer to the shoreline and calmer currents that lazily slow down towards the center of the river stream.

SOME OVERALL TIPS:

🏞️ 🌊 Pay attention to what kind of water you're drawing. In a river or a big lake, you'll have a fun interplay of fast and slow moving currents that can be represented with an equally fun interplay of short and long brushstrokes in your art. I always observe the way water works in nature first before I draw (either by looking at photographs or going outside on a walk and studying all the little details I see) and then with those details in mind I find a brush or combination of brushes that'll help capture the texture or feeling of that type of water in my nature scenes.

🏞️ 🌊 When drawing water, I always use a solid or nearly solid brush opacity to capture a very crisp wet feeling (usually somewhere between 75% - 100% opacity). If you're finding your water's looking a bit dull and lackluster, check to see what brush opacity you're using as you paint. It's very natural to want to lower your opacity to softly blend all your colors together for that smooth water effect. I did that too, haha. But over time I found that choosing higher brush opacities while using a wider range of color values works far better for a crisp refreshing water feeling.

🏞️ 🌊 For that crystal clear drinkable mountain spring water look, use streaks of light color values snuggled right next to really dark color values. Don't be afraid to go bold, as the higher the contrast between two colors, the more shimmery your water's going to look. But make sure to balance it all out by using some medium color values in key places. Water that's nothing but really high contrasted values is going to look overly glaring with light. Similarly, if you use colors that are closer in value to one another without much contrast, your water's going to look murkier. Which in itself can be a desired look if you're drawing something like a lotus pond that's rich with mud sediment. So finding a balance is key, and the direction and angle of your sunlight will play a huge role in determining where the intense high contrast sparkles are and where the calmer softer sections will be on your water.

🏞️ 🌊 I will only ever use pure white for the brightest most shimmery highlights on water. It's tempting to use specks of white everywhere for those sparkling highlights, but you'll find that if you use a wider range of color values and a mixture of hot and cool colors throughout your water, it'll look much more vivid and fluid without the need to rely on white so heavily for the effect. It'll look much more natural too!

🏞️ 🌊 One thing I love about painting rivers and lake shorelines is that sometimes you can see both a reflection *and* see all the way down to the bottom of the water at the same time. It's a really cool effect to try and capture if your river or shoreline lends itself to it. You can see that effect in the making here:

🍂🍁⛰️🎨🖌️ There's really no right or wrong brush to achieve an amazing water look as long as you pay attention to how you're using it to capture the texture or feeling of water. That being said, I get the feeling some of you are probably eyeing those ink brushes you saw me using above for making instant rippling water reflections. You're in luck! Those handmade brushes of mine are indeed available on my Patreon if you want to use them in your art.

My Patreon right now is merely donations only so I can focus on watercolors and RWBY nature scenes, but there are a lot of tutorial/brush bundles and painting insights there if you're interested in learning more about how I paint. Be sure to select the tiers with the starter packs and tutorial sets for all the goodies!

🌷🌿🎨🖌️ https://www.patreon.com/saemidori

I hope this gives you a little more insight into how I paint water. It's a difficult subject to say the least, but painting water can be a lot of fun once you get past the tricky part of understanding how it works. Have fun splashing with colors!

[sejinpk]

I was going through Hanekawa Tsubasa tags and I kind of ended up in your blog. I'm glad with what I've found here. Also, I have a question! In Nekomonogatari: Shiro, can we argue that Hanekawa, before the fight with Kako, actually managed to become one with her "Black" reflection? I'm asking because I have this feeling that we might see her using her "Black" self at free will in future.

Hey, thanks! I’m happy that you like what I’ve posted!

It’s been quite a while since I’ve read or watched Neko: Shiro, so my memory is probably not super-accurate at this point (in particular, my memory of most of the novel-only stuff is really hazy and vague). But, the way I understood it, Tsubasa takes the first steps of coming to terms with Black Hanekawa, as well as her general unhealthy mental processes, when she writes the letter asking for her help.At the beginning of her confrontation/fight with Kako, I think Tsubasa is more leaning on Black Hanekawa, on these “black” aspects of herself, rather than having already fully integrated these two sides of herself. Fully seeing and hearing her as Black Hanekawa indicates that there’s still a disconnect between the two. I think the point at which Tsubasa and Black Hanekawa become more closely integrated is when we hear Tsubasa’s voice come out of Black Hanekawa’s mouth. I think this represents that Tsubasa has finally truly accepted Black Hanekawa as a valid part of herself, not just a part she can lean on as a kind of disconnected other half, but as really owning these “black” aspects of herself. Like, “This is me. These are my thoughts and feelings. They are a real, valid part of me, and I will express them wholeheartedly, full-throatedly, in my own voice with my own words.”

I definitely agree that Tsubasa managed to become one with and fully integrate Black Hanekawa. To me, though, this seemed to begin to happen while the confrontation with Kako was well underway, not before it. And I think this integration process continues past the confrontation.

One thing I really appreciate about Tsubasa’s overall arc, and especially the later parts of it in Neko: Shiro, is that it takes a while. It has stops and starts, sometimes things happen in bursts and other times they’re drawn out. Because that’s how learning about yourself and personal growth are. It’s a process that takes time. Like, Tsubasa accepts that Black Hanekawa and Kako are valid aspects of herself by the end of her confrontation with Kako in Neko: Shiro, but that’s not the end of it. Even though she’s accepted them, and has even tried to express herself through one of them (her voice coming out of Black Hanekawa’s mouth), she still has to work a lot to sort through and really understand these other aspects of herself that she’s been denying for so long, to figure out how they actually fit into her personality/sense of self, and how to express them. Something that I don’t think is mentioned in the Neko: Shiro anime, but is in the novel, is that after the confrontation with Kako, Tsubasa spent a full month at Senjougahara’s house putting her broken, fragmented self back together and figuring out who she is in the context of all these new feelings and aspects of herself that she never properly dealt with before.

That’s the way I interpreted it, anyway.

And yes! I definitely want to see more of Tsubasa post-Neko: Shiro, to see how she’s integrated Black Hanekawa and Kako, and to see how she expresses those aspects of herself. We get a little bit of this in Koimonogatari and Owarimonogatari (I’ve only seen the first season of Owari; I also haven’t seen or read Kizumonogatari), but it’s from other characters’ perspectives, not her own. One of the “Next Season” novels after Zoku-Owarimonogatari has a “Tsubasa Sleeping” story, which I’m told occurs after Neko: Shiro and is narrated from her perspective. I’ve really been wanting to read it, and I really hope SHAFT adapts the Monogatari series that far. I’m so curious to see Tsubasa express these sides of herself that we’ve only seen through Black Hanekawa or Kako.

I just want to say thank you for this ask. It’s been a long time since I’ve really worked my brain into thinking and writing in-depth about Monogatari, and Tsubasa is my favorite character. It feels so good and exciting and refreshing to really dig back into and think about her character. So thank you for prompting that with your ask. :)