A card for grandma .. a boy reading under a hydrangea-colored cherry tree ..
A card for mom .. a mother phoenix and her two children ..
Not a card at all =P ..
Nisu+Faxu+Juliax3
Don’t you wish we could live our lives like this?
Nisunie looks like Waldo .. but Waldo is hot (?!) so w/e.
P.S. I hate feet. Feet suck.
C says:
May 13, 2009, 6:52 pmjhlo says:
Wow, you just took brevity to the next level there, C ….
May 13, 2009, 6:54 pmC says:
haha, wow, I totally don’t know what happened. I wrote such a nice little piece too. :) haha, this reminds me of the time in 10th grade when I wanted to submit a blank page titled “artist license” in my english class. Anyway, the gist of my previous comment is that yay! your watercolors make me very happy! They evoke a very peaceful, nostalgic mood. Kinda like Honey and Clover. Did you take any classes in Chinese watercolor? The mountains are very similar to that style. I also find it pretty amusing that one of the phoenix is playing with a ball on its back. Very adorable. :) Oh and do you ink your art before or after applying watercolor?
May 13, 2009, 7:49 pmjhlo says:
1. Speaking of Honey and Clover, have you watched Higashi no Eden (“Eden of the East”) yet? it’s an action thriller + romantic comedy with the same character designer as H&C
2. Glad that they make you happy!
3. I’ve sworn never to take an art class again since 7th grade, and I haven’t. I learned how to draw this type of Chinese mountain from manga such as Rumiko Takahashi’s work as well as Chinese paintings in the MFA, National Palace Museum in Taipei, etc. The coloring palette is based on an American TV show based on Amy Tan’s work called “Sagwa” about Chinese cats. I can draw mountains in both Western and Eastern styles, but this style is a lot easier because it consists of a lot of halves of rounded rectangles and trapezoids, rather than triangular branching fractals.
4. I ink the art before painting so that I can erase all my pencil lines and smudges, but sometimes I go over heavily obscured lines again afterwards, especially for facial features. But this ruins my inking pens and plus it can majorly screw up if there’s still water in the paint. An example of where this is very bad is Nisu’s skirt, which is very, very dark because I tried to touch it up.
May 13, 2009, 8:09 pmC says:
1. Yay another anime to watch. I am currently in Ristorante Paradiso. The art in it is very good and the style is very mature, kinda realistic…
2. :)
3. Hmm, I think I may have watched this Sagwah show. Is there a cat in there that is also named “watermelon” (xigua)? I also always assumed that it was a Canadian show because it was on PBS and so many of the good shows on PBS are actually Canadian (like The Red, Green Show).
4. Whenever I ink before I apply watercolor, the ink smudges… sometimes it creates a nice effect and sometimes it’s an oh crap situation… ^^;;
May 14, 2009, 7:25 amjhlo says:
I don’t really use “ink” .. that’s why I can do it without any smudges. After a bit of trial and error, I discovered that Sakura micron pens (and any “archival” ink or alcohol-proof lab pen) are waterproof once they dry. Although the lines from using a pen are not as elegant as using ink, when you have a decent set (005, 01, 02, 03, 05, 08, and brush is a complete set of Sakura microns), you can create a lot of different stroke widths.
And I believe that Sagwa is from the US. The names of the cats are, to my understanding, a play on the children’s joke “Donggua Xigua Ni Shagua!”
I’ll check out Ristorante Paradiso sometime, thanks for the rec!
May 14, 2009, 10:31 amMelike says:
Yes, I’ve been using Sakura pens since I was… 13..? Very nice work! I love the color schemes and the Chinese-like style.
May 16, 2009, 1:26 pm