Figure Skating
My dear awesome sister Mostle drew the following picture for me:
Sano is my favorite, followed by Shishio. Which are your favorites??
Rainbow Love Explosion!!
Even in a series where I’m open to lots of potential pairing arrangements, I still have an optimal lineup of couples that provides me with the greatest possible satisfaction at one time. My favorite arrangement of Rurouni Kenshin characters is as follows:
Saitou and Sano
Kaoru and Kenshin
Chou and Kamatari
Aoshi and Soujirou
Hiko and Megumi
Enishi and Misao
Shishio and Yumi
This leaves some characters I’m fond of — Katsu, Tomoe, and Gein, for example — without romantic partners. In combination with the lineup above, I tend to prefer Katsu with practically OC Tokio, Tomoe as Kenshin’s ex (probably dead, poor thing), and Gein as all the single ladies put your hands up.
Interestingly, I’ve never actually written a story or series of stories wherein I’ve hit every single one of these pairings. HoH is going to come close, but Enishi’s dead before the series starts and Misao and Tokio are cats. Katsu’s romantic fate is still up in the air… maybe he will become part of the first cross-fandom pairing and hook up with a Gundam Wing character? We’ll see, I suppose.
Anyway, my point is that, for a pairing that’s part of my optimal lineup, I don’t give Chou and Kamatari nearly enough love. They’re just so freaking adorable together. So I drew a picture of them in their canon outfits (and with Kamatari’s anime hair color, which I am fond of but which tends to revert to manga red for just about every story I write that mentions it). It took me, like, three months to draw on account of being busy, but whatevs! Yay Chou and Kamatari!!
First Kiss
violetice’s Ara
Look, I’ve actually come up with another art exchange piece that I like enough to post around here! Which is miraculous, because no scan or photo of this picture does it justice; there are color and texture subtleties that get lost every time. I’m extremely pleased with the original, though.
Red and Green
This is the picture I mentioned recently as having been sitting near me at my computer table, unfinished, since last November. Now complete and (I think) pretty decent-looking, it has become a present for Sharon.
Hospital
I really should make an entry about my internship now that I’m at the halfway point, but I don’t feel like it. It’s going well. Much more interesting than that is the amazing picture drawn by Candra, whose art I have long adored, for me by commission:
This is a scene from Death Wish, and I literally cried when she sent me the initial sketch. Isn’t she just spectacular?? Her commissions still seem to be open, if anyone else is interested in jumping on that chance!!
Under the Door
Watercolor pencil has, among its many other virtues, the benefit of needing to dry after you’ve wetted it, and therefore being a very useful medium to work with in an alternating pattern with some other pursuit. Say, for example, you’re trying to memorize which of twenty-five different types of suture materials are absorbable (and how quickly they’re absorbed under what circumstances and therefore what types of surgeries they’re best for), and this is so boring it’s threatening to cause you to fade into nonexistence — the solution to this dilemma is to work a bit on a picture, then study while it dries, then work on the picture again, and so on.
The long and short of this is that I’ve drawn several pictures in the middle of studying over the last couple of months, and from “several” must (and did) come at least one I like enough to post! So here that is.
SHARKFACE
Month after month after month, I put off my art exchange piece until the last weekend of the month, draw something barely passable at best, and tell myself, “Next month I will start as soon as I get the assignment so as to work on it in whatever spare time I happen to have all through the month so my picture will NOT SUCK.” And month after month after month, this doesn’t happen.
But in September, by some miracle, I actually managed to do it. And behold! The picture does not suck!
He Can Be Taught 3/6
He Can Be Taught 1/6
HOW NOW
Seeing Red title picture breakdown
Check out the new Seeing Red title picture I have drawn, if you wish, and here are details
Plastic title picture breakdown
2012 Style
Despite any suggestions I may have made to the contrary, there’s actually no interaction between Saitou and Sano in the 2012 Rurouni Kenshin movie. This has not in any way lessened the amount of freaking out I’ve been doing lately about my favorite pairing in this tweaked setting. Sooooo I drew them.
Yes, yes, it’s a little early for a Valentine’s-Day-style picture, but I’d already been contemplating such a thing with canon Saitou and Sano before I realized I desperately needed to draw their movieverse iterations. Since I’m not likely to have anything special up for the actual holiday, this will have to do.
Aaaanyway, this was my best attempt at trying to get people in a drawing to look like actual people that exist (whereas I usually stop at just trying to get them to look human), and I think they do vaguely resemble their portrayals in this movie. I consider that a major triumph.
I didn’t actually mean to revive this soft-shading style that I abandoned some years ago, but found myself working in it before I’d given any real thought to what style I did want to shade in. It turned out just fine, so my only complaint is that this style TAKES TWO HUNDRED YEARS and is extremely taxing on my poor wrists (the right because I’m right-handed and the left because, apparently, sympathy pains are cool SOLIDARITY WOT).
In closing, Saitou and Sano forever.