When I started drawing actively again late last year, I think my unconscious aim was to rediscover the mojo that, as evidenced by this blog post, somewhat fizzled out due to dependence on Photoshop and Illustrator. Now that I got my fill drawing animals, plants and flowers teehee, I’m finding myself being drawn to figure drawing and watercolor. At first I thought colored pencils were going to be my go-to medium (I still love them but they make my hand hurt after a while) but after doing the portraits of the Eraserkids, I felt the urge to keep on painting.

I knew I wanted to paint more people and again I remembered this old artwork that I made in school.

“Fence” 1990

I figured that it would be fun to paint couples in “kilig” moments and realized that hey, the anime, J-dramas and J-movies I’ve been watching all these years are full of those. Not only will I get to hone my figure drawing and watercolor painting skills, I’ll also get to draw my favorite characters.  😉

So, if you’ve been keeping an eye on my Instagram feed, you’ve already seen these. But since you’re here, let me tell you the back stories for each of them. I didn’t want to just copy and make illustrated versions of stills and posters so I added a few twists.

1. The artwork I made for “Bokura Ga Ita” (on the right) was based on a scene in the anime series’ closing theme (top left) but I tried drawing the characters as they were portrayed in the live action movies which starred Ikuta Toma and Yoshitaka Yuriko.

2.  I based my fan art for “Koizora” on the manga poster (top left) but again, I used the live action movie’s actors’ (Gakki and Haruma Miura) likenesses in my drawing. Of course I also took some liberty with their outfits. It’s so warm that I couldn’t bring myself to draw cold weather clothes. 😉

3. For my “Nodame Cantabile” fan artwork, I tried to do the opposite — base the pose on the live action poster and draw them as the anime characters. But I love Ueno Juri and Tamaki Hiroshi so much that I ended up drawing them as they were…. except, again, for the winter clothing. 😉

4. My most recent fan art is for the anime series “Beck.” Arnold and I love this series, thanks to the recommendation of my brother Calvin and wife Inches. 🙂 The pose in my fan art isn’t based on anything but the outfits are inspired by what Koyuki and Maho wore in the anime and the faces are again based somewhat on the actors.

(Slight diversion: To be honest, we thought Sato Takeru and Kutsuna Shiori were miscast as Koyuki and Maho respectively. Takeru was perfect as Rurouni Kenshin but as Koyuki? Koike Teppei would’ve been more believable… but that’s just my opinion. As for Maho, I think Chiaki Kuriyama would’ve been a more suitable choice. And my biggest issue with the film — why no singing voice for Koyuki?)

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On another note, I’m excited to use this thing of beauty in my upcoming artworks.

Time to level up from Prang ????(which will always have a special place in my ??). Couldn’t wait to try out this paint set hence those cupcake doodles in wash and opaque #watercolor styles. ????? #gansaitambi #kuretake

A photo posted by Cynthia Bauzon-Arre (@arncyn) on Mar 20, 2015 at 7:58am PDT

I’ve been using school-grade watercolors since, well, school (not that there’s anything wrong with Prang which has served me well) so I thought it was high time to go a bit more pro. I ordered this Kuretake Gansai Tambi set of traditional Japanese watercolors as an – ahem- advanced birthday gift to myself. It came in a big and elegant green box with the Kanji characters for “Gan-Sai-Tan-Bi” and inside are 36 big pans of creamy, candy-colored goodness. [insert heart-eyed emoji] The 36-color set includes three glittery paints — gold (kin), blue-gold (aokin), and silver (gin) by the way.

I couldn’t wait to try it out so I quickly doodled cupcakes, both in a washy transparent and opaque gouache-like style. It looks thick and creamy at first glance but, depending on how much water your brush is loaded with, it will glide smoothly and as transparent as you want on paper. It appears that I can use these on dark colored surfaces too though I haven’t tried that yet. I’ll show you more work using these soon!

I was in the middle of turning those vintage camera doodles on the left into a seamless digital pattern for my online stores when I thought, hey this is a good time to make another tutorial. I do know how much you (yup, all 3 of you) like reading about my design process. 😉

Step 1: Doodle, scan, clean up in Photoshop (I’m still using a Jurassic CS3 so if you’re using a newer version, you can disregard this entire blog post huhuhu). Some points to remember:

• save your doodles in grayscale, TIFF format
• clean it up, erase all pencil marks, close all broken lines
• once clean, make another layer for your doodles and change the mode from grayscale to bitmap then change it back to grayscale (this will allow you to easily select and remove the white background)

Step 2: Create a new file for your pattern. I usually start with a 1500px x 1500px file. Paste your cleaned-up doodles into that file and arrange them however you like on the page.

Step 3: Add color to your drawings.

• make separate layers for the background, outline, and fill color(s) so you can easily make variant colorways in the future
• once you’re happy with the colors, duplicate all the layers and place one “untouched” set in a folder and turn off the “eye” symbol to make it invisible for now
• important: leave the background as a separate layer

Step 4: Merge the outline and fill layers of your drawing.

• an additional precautionary step I take is to select the entire file and then go to Image > Crop in the dropdown. This way, tiny pixels that could mess up the next step will be eliminated.

Step 5: Select the merged layer and choose Filter > Other > Offset ((if you’re using a different version of Photoshop, it might be located under a different dropdown)). Type in a number that’s half of your document size in the pop-up. Since my file is 1500px x 1500px, I typed in 750 for both horizontal and vertical instances. Your drawings will scatter to the edges.

• remember to tick “wraparound” in the popup box
• check to see if the images in the corners will connect with one another without gaps. This is why the “Crop” command I added in Step 4 is important. Sometimes tiny, hardly visible pixels will throw the alignment off.

Step 6: Remember I told you to make a duplicate layer for the drawings? Turn on the “eye” symbol and make it visible. Take the duplicate versions of the drawings and arrange them randomly to fill up the blank spaces. This is now your “Master” file. Save it as a .PSD so you can do edits later.

• I like to flip and scale the duplicate drawings to give the pattern a (in breathy voice) casually-thrown-together look. 😉
• see how I’ve left the background color as a separate layer? This way I can easily change it to make a variant of the pattern.

Step 7: Time to test your pattern. Select the entire page and go to Edit > Define Pattern. Type a name for your pattern in the pop-up.

Step 8: Make a new document in US Letter or A4 size (it really doesn’t matter). Create a layer, select it and go to Layer > Layer Style > Pattern Overlay. Select the pattern you just made in the Pattern palette that pops up.

Step 9: Inspect your pattern and watch out for elements that don’t align or are too close to one another. Edit your master file accordingly and repeat steps 6-8.

Step 10: Once you’re happy with the pattern, save your square master file as a JPEG. You can now use that to make fabric patterns in Spoonflower or Zazzle and make some extra pocket money.

I’ve yet to upload it to my stores (since I was *ahem* busy making this tutorial) but I do hope you’ll find this post useful. 🙂

UPDATE: Now available on fabric, wrapping paper, ribbons, and other fun items on Zazzle.

Vintage Cameras (White / Pink) Fabric by funkypatterns

Here’s something I’ve been laboring on this past couple of weeks — a watercolor version of my floral alphabet. Progress has been verrry slow but that’s also because I haven’t been working on it as often as I should because I’m lazy because I keep finding other things I want to do ((like watch TV. I just started Karamazov no Kyoudai, the Japanese drama adaptation of The Brothers Karamazov and it’s got me hooked.))  According to my Instagram, I started working on the alphabet on Feb. 1st. And here’s where I am so far.

(Do you lefties also paint from right to left?)

Hopefully posting it here will push me to finish it… OKAY. This time next week it *will* be done — I promise you, Universe!

I’m also thrilled to show you the proofs of my art cards.

I had them printed on 250 gsm lightly-textured archival & eco-friendly card stock so they’re sturdy and very nice to the touch. Although I had to slightly adjust the colors on my files because they printed darker than I expected, I’m very happy with how they turned out. Once the final prints arrive you can bet that I will open that shop I’ve been promising (myself, more than anyone else actually. 🙂 )

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And finally here’s my lovely friend (one of my bridesmaids!) April with the portraits of her Shiba dogs Mya and King. I just had to show you (with her permission of course) how happy she is with the drawings. 🙂

Mya (orange) is 6 and King (black) is 4 years old.  There are still very few Shiba inu parents here in the Philippines and April is among the few so if you’re considering owning one yourself, do check out her blog Owned by a Shiba. ((It hasn’t been updated in a while but there’s a lot of detailed information on there about caring for and rearing Shiba Inus.))