#renruki art practice

[recurring-polynya]

it has been two years but here's some more shin'ou winter coat content

[fluffnflightillustrations]

i really like your art style for renruki, you make them look so cool 🫶

so i was wondering if you can see more of your art for other ships like ichihime and hitsuhina??

If people commission them, definitely! But to be honest, the only ship that really truly moves me is renruki, so its the one i always draw in my downtime. Ichihime is cute, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't strike my heart's strings the way renruki does. I'm practicing with ichihime for once right now, but its just... not coming out the way I wish it would, so I scrapped it.

It's so nice to hear that, and I appreciate your support! But the fact is simply that they just dont make me as happy as renji and rukia do, and drawing them in my free time doesn't give me the same giddy happyness in my heart that Renruki does.

I'll totally draw them if I get a comm of them, of course, but odds are it wont likely be in my free time drawings. I'm sorry!

This, and I don't know how I feel about hitsuhina. To me, I just never personally shipped Toshiro with anybody, so I'm not even sure I will ever draw that ship unless comissioned. I don't hate it or dislike it, but i dont love it or like it either; I've just never quite thought much about it. But they have a lovely dynamic.

[scratching92]

Personal Update 20/02/2022

Nothing much to say, just a few updates on some personal projects, since I figured I should use this blog to track my progress. I don’t know if I’ll post an update every week or every other week or what, but I figured I should keep some record.

First thing’s first: digital art. I started properly getting into digital art with a tablet this year, and in the past month I’ve done a bunch of art and animations, as you’ve probably seen if you’ve paid attention to this blog. Unfortunately, I’ve hit a point where I’ve become more acutely aware of the progress I’ve made in getting more comfortable with a tablet, but also how little progress I’ve made overall. I want my art to look better than it currently is, but I’m not sure I’ve figured out how to actually go about doing that beyond just more practice, which is ugh. I have a bunch of unfinished sketches saved in folders because I keep seeing flaws in each of them and lack the energy or patience to fix them (assuming there is a fix beyond “erase the entire thing and start over”). But I need to push myself to actually finish what I start, because otherwise I feel I’m gonna develop some bad habits all over again (most of my non-digital art is... Notoriously incomplete).

On the fanfic side... Things are okay, I guess. I finished that Ichihime fic, which is nice, but I’ve also added maybe 200 words to that YGO 5Ds fic, and all 200 of them will probably be erased and rewritten anyway next time I open the document. It’s more than nothing, but it’s not much more either. I already figured I was in for the long haul with that fic though, so I suppose I can’t say I’m surprised. I also want to try and write something Renruki-related. I have the beginnings of an idea for something involving Renji’s transfer to the Eleventh Division, but nothing concrete so far beyond that.

I don’t have much else to say. Now that I’ve finished reading Frankenstein I’ve decided to read The Conquest of Bread, but I don’t think I’ll do any kind of read-through blog posts for that like I did Frankenstein. Maybe I will when I get my copy of Midnight Horizon in the post, who knows.

[meishiro]

BLEACH: WINTER CAFE [ICHIHIME]

"She is something to behold Elegant and bold She is electricity Running to my soul, oh." ~ Vance Joy (Georgia) Decided to focus on my OTPs for a little bit I think, that way I can practice canon characters a bit more and actually appreciate the ships I have aha. IchiHime is one of my oldest ships and oh my god, I love them so much lol I have another IchiHime drawing that I'm working on and then I might draw something RenRuki and see if I can finally do justice to them c: BLEACH; Ichigo Kurosaki & Orihime Inoue is (c) to Tite Kubo Art is (c) to meishiro

[recurring-polynya]

Art club prompt was "heart sunglasses" and I knew what I had to do

[recurring-polynya]

Happy Valentine's Day! I made it in time!

[recurring-polynya]

Profile views for Rukia. Unfortunately, I suffer from a disease called "watched Escaflowne at a formative lifestage" that makes me always want to draw noses super pointy in profile, which is what is going on in #2. Weirdly enough, in a way I cannot argue from logic, she looks more like Hisana there, so maybe the solution is that Hisana's nose is pointier than Rukia's, and I can save the pointy noses for her. I actually think I got the nose just about how I want it in #4. I drew the lieutenant hair. It was stupid and hard to draw. Alas.

[recurring-polynya]

Finally finished my Renji profiles! It's hard to find time to draw on the weekends. Numbered in the order I drew them...I had to rearrange them a little in order to get them all on the same page without having to shrink them down too much because his hair takes up so much space. I think (2) might be my favorite? Again, that's a tiny bit unfair because that style of bandana so much easier to draw. I made myself draw the other one twice, even though I didn't want to, for practice. I also had to cut myself off because he's got so many annoying details that I could literally just spend forever futzing around, trying to make his nose or his hair or his tatts look the teeniest, tiniest bit better. But the idea is practicing!! More is better! Do it quick and draw another one!!

[recurring-polynya]

oh no i love him

[recurring-polynya]

Some three-quarter Rukias. I'm not sure I would say they are *good*, but they are definitely *not bad*, either. I feel like I am really getting the hang of a 3/4 method that works for me. I think in the past, I have always gotten hung up on the idea of the face being curved, but the important thing is more that the face is on a perspective plane and thinking about the direction it is pointing is much more fruitful than thinking about the curvature. In the past, I have always really really struggled to get eye in a 3/4 view to look like they are focused and I feel like these are so much better than ones I have drawn in the past, and it just sort of comes along naturally with the method. I still don't know how to point noses if the face is tilted up even the least bit. Can't have everything.

[recurring-polynya]

today, i bring you renji-eyes

in my heart, i would *prefer* to give him actual irises, but there is some essential renji-ness in just having tiny, beady dots

a thing i think i learned over the coarse of this exercise is that it's better to make the lines too thick and then erase away the parts i don't want. this is also the key to getting all those sharp points (a thing i learned back when i had a job cutting out parts on a CNC mill and have not stopped thinking about since)

[recurring-polynya]

hmm...would it be useful/motivational/fun to post my daily drawing practice? maybe i'll try it and see. today i did rukia-eyes.

[recurring-polynya]

she got the highest grade in her kidou class, you know.

[recurring-polynya]

noses noses noses

Noses are one of those things that I *always* notice about other people's fanart, and I have yet to come up with a system I actually like for drawing them. Anime style is what it is, but I have never been a fan of the old shadow-suggestion-of-a-nose. Sadly, I often find that a vertical line or a big goofy L-shape often looks better than anything else I can come up with, and I'd like to be better than that. I'm definitely not moving on from the face part of this project until I can come up with a nose method that I like for each of the three most common projections (head-on, profile and 3/4 view), although I think I need to practice putting them together into faces before I can really decide what I think works best.

[recurring-polynya]

Front views. It took me a few days to finish these, because it's both facial proportions practice and hair practice.

Some takeaways: - I think I have figured out a way I like drawing everyone's noses (at least from the front) - I always want to draw Renji in the order head->hair->tatts->bandana and I can't. I gotta get the bandana in earlier in the process, or else his head is too narrow at the top. His head is really weirdly shaped, btw. -Timeskip bandana is SO MUCH EASIER to draw than the kind that is knotted in front - I probably should have tried drawing one of Rukia's other hairstyles but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - I am so so so bad at drawing things symmetrically, but I am putting in extra effort to do so and I think it's paying off (which isn't to say these are actually symmetrical, just that they are more symmetrical than they were when I started)

[recurring-polynya]

I just did a quick run-through of mouth practice for two reasons. (1) Mouths move a lot, so the way I draw them is going to be very situational. There's not all that much value in having a "standard" way to draw mouths. (2) I'm pretty happy with the way i do mouths, already.

I did come away with a few observations:

I think that in general, Renji's mouth expressions should be asymmetrical. He's a slouchy, sneering, roguish sort of guy.

Rukia code-switches a lot, and her expressions should also be more lop-sided when she's been a shithead, and more symmetrical when she's in Kuchiki-mode.

Likewise, sometimes I like to draw Rukia with full lips, but often not, depending on the tone of the piece. I actually really dislike when fanartists draw her looking too girly, and I'd rather err in the opposite direction.

I love Renji's fangs more than anything, but they never look good when I try to draw them and I should just stop. It's too fine a detail, and it doesn't match the scale of the way I draw other stuff.