A Place of a Contemplating Robot
I went with something more low-key. Jenny deserves some quiet, calm time now and then.😊(Also, a little reference in the title, and not just to the og show😉)
Really wanted to get another loose illustration out in time for the 20th anniversary. Plus, I’ve been meaning to do a calm piece. Between Jenny’s world-saving duty, life drama, robot-related issues, & people’s pettiness (sometimes including her own😓), I thought that she could use time to herself. That 3rd reason kinda sounds like sending a kid off to timeout for misbehavior, but hey, there might be stress behind that pettiness.🤷♀️ She does have the weight of the world on her shoulders. That, or it might be timeout-like after all😆 where she gets alone time to directly face her mental problems, with no physical problems to distract her.🤔
Or more interesting: needing to handle her mental problem in order to handle her physical one.🤯
Some might think calmer moments are boring, but I consider it a welcomed, necessary breath of fresh air, especially as someone who had a loud, tense upbringing.
Mini Journal
Ended up needing to keep my iPad charging the whole time; larger resolution (11x14” @ 300dpi) *and* Fresco’s live watercolor brushes drained it more quickly (~20% in 20 minutes). Even then, still a lot of crashes once I finished the sidewalk and bench. Now, only rarely do at that resolution. Watercolor-styled pieces will likely be 9x12” @ 300dpi, max.
Far more painful painting process in a full space. In a way, more directly an urban-sketching styled piece because now, it’s in a physical place instead of a void w/ colors! Similar to before, I mitigated some of the difficulty by using an analogous color scheme. This time, I really struggled with working w/ whitespace, like in Teoh Yi Chie’s or Liz Steel’s urban sketching styles.
What helped may have been a style I saw in this colored pencil Liz Steel piece https://www.lizsteel.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/LizSteel-159-1104CafeFeohPacHwy.jpg , where sidewalk & road are white, & the only blocks of color are for cast shadows.
Self-Reference
I got into the pose myself, mainly to fix her bent leg & folded hands. In the end, moved the bend leg up, just showed her right hands’ fingers & her left hand’s index finger, & unbent her other leg. Tried to focus on the feeling & gesture of the pose, rather than follow the pose exactly to a T. Mlaatr is just about the perfect style for that, being a gestural cartoon.
Concurrent Illustrating & Post/Note-Taking
I illustrated & prepped my post at same time (...at least until I got to painting the sidewalk😥). In a way, it’s kinda good I didn’t do it this way before, since I didn't have set categories (like Behind-the scenes or Mini Journal) yet. Nonetheless, I still tried to be as organized as possible by having a preliminary & final version of the post on a Google Doc (especially since ELA has been my historical weak area😥).
Behind-the-Scenes: Story, Color Scheme, & Color Application Influences.
Tone & situation/implied story: the 1998 Yokohama Shopping Log OVA, with a robot (in YSL's case, a more human-like android) just hanging out and living life. Maybe even resolving some past problems or relationships.
Color scheme & watercolor style:
grass: how he colored the tree leaves here, by letting the colors mix on the page instead of mixing them himself. https://twitter.com/ParkaBlogs/status/1682275817668362240?s=20
sidewalk: after a lot of struggling, went with Liz Steel’s colored pencil technique: layering lots of colors, especially in shadow areas https://www.lizsteel.com/switching-to-coloured-pencils/ , along with, as noted w/ the first colored pencil sketch I listed, having the rest of the roads/sidewalks be white—controlling whitespace
Art Supplies
Hardware: iPad mini 5th gen & Apple pencil 1st gen
Software: Adobe Fresco
Brushes:
Lineart: Pencil [default Adobe Fresco brush]
Color:
Watercolor wash flat (grass, bench, bench shadow, sidewalk, Jenny clothes & hair)
Watercolor wash soft (sky)
Watercolor basic round (Jenny shadows)
Block stain (bench shadow 2nd pass)
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