hollyqk

WIP: first + third year 02

Progress!

WIP: first + third year 01

Two good friends separated by two high school grades. I wanted to show a contrast between the two years: the first year of fresh experiences and uncertainty, and the final year leading up to the first steps into adulthood. But I also wanted to show two very different people who can still be close despite their character and age differences.

I actually finished a sketch for this drawing yesterday, but it wasn't very dynamic and I felt I could do better, so that's what I tried to do today.

Aug. 2017 rewards out + It's been a year! + Sept. plans

I just finished sending out all the rewards. All the pledges went through really smoothly this month! Thanks again so much!

If you didn't know, I'm just about a year into this Patreon of mine. In a week or so, it will have been twelve months since I resolved to launch and make it work one day. I'm glad to say it really has grown since then, accumulating a relatively good number of patrons, counting both people I know and people I've only come to know, as well as bringing in more or le...

Rika stuff [continue reading]

Colored version of those lines from earlier.

WIP: Rika stuff

I got up really early today (by some miracle) so I had time to draw before eating breakfast, which I'm about to do!

I wanted to try out a couple of inking-related things, so I took the opportunity to draw Rika hot pants. yeah

I'll throw these in the $1 tier for August since I have them!

Hululu!

It's Hululu!

This is a collab painting with @miramusu. We passed a PSD back and forth until the drawing was considered done, which took two round trips between the two of us. It's kind of a fun process.

comm: Ange

Princess Principal!

I took too long to get around to this, but I had fun with it in the end. Working out the pose was enjoyable and it was fun to draw something more dynamic than what I've been drawing lately.

Thanks!

Mika+Miria: lines

Some lines for the $1 tier (full-res in the reward pack). Forgot to post this first as a WIP. Oh well

Mika&Miria

(So cute together...)

I made this yesterday in one sitting. I want to try to get into the habit of drawing more stuff in a quicker, looser fashion, so that I can post drawings more regularly (Patreon, pixiv, dA, etc.).

Progress is a little slow this month... Next I have to start working on commissions. I should have enough time to finish everything by the 1st, though.

WIP: some kind of post-apocalyptic thing

Ever on the quest of trying new things... things that I'm not always that great at. It's not done yet, but this is where I'm at for now. I need to get started on other sketches soon...

rika!

I painted Rika this morning as a "thanks for 600 followers!" drawing on pixiv! I'll probably toss the PSD in the August rewards.

leaving for a bit

Just a quick heads-up:

I'm leaving for a trip again starting tomorrow, but it's short and I should be back on the following Monday. I'll try and get some sketches and previews up during that week!

storyboard previews

STORYBOARDS

Storyboards. They're coming along, as I've mentioned. I'm almost done with the first chapter, I guess you could call it.

It was hard at first and still is a challenge to avoid going too into detail with these things. I think as I do more of these they'll start to become looser and quicker, like storyboards should be (especially when the story is this long), so I'll keep at it. Once I finish this chapter though, I think I'll start inking it to see how it looks.

...

July 2017 rewards out... and updates, as usual

I just finished sending out the July rewards! I'm really relieved there were no declined pledges this time. They always make me nervous.

I finished the bulk of the work about a week before the end of July, so I spent the last few days of the month sketching out pages for the comic I'm still working on. I'll post previews of that separately some time later. I'm finally starting to get somewhere and it's a bit exciting, but I still have a lot of storyboards to make, and then inking and finalizin...

comm: Misaki Takasaki

From Koi to Uso. Thanks!

I did go a bit further than I usually do with commissions, but I didn't want to waste the chance to practice a couple of things while I was at it...

WIP: more shiburin

Every once in a while I gravitate towards drawing Rin. It's mysterious. But here's the lineart this time, for the $1 tier this month (hi-res in the reward pack as usual)!

IDOL KNIGHTS: Sveira

It's Sveira! Drawn by @miramusu this time. Thank you! Isn't her hair lovely?

Sveira cares for one thing more than all else, and that's her sword, Rorunal. Though she's made quite a name for herself, her sword's been with her since her first days of training, and she attributes all her successes to it.

So now there's a small handful of characters on the list. It's getting exciting if you ask me. I have an idea f...

IDOL KNIGHTS: Yuko [multi]

Here's another one. I wanted to make a hot spring-inspired Idol Knight. I thought she should have an outfit reminiscent of a traditional ryokan attendant, with some cute flair added to it to make it into something more like an idol costume. Her name is taken from the term for "hot water." Like in a hot spring!

Her role is a healer, so she carries around remedies and other medicinal ingredie...

IDOL KNIGHTS(?): monster design [multi]

Monster design of some kind...? Or mostly just practice. I don't draw many male figures so I figured I'd try it a bit every once in a while. Also looking at a bunch of Magic The Gathering art kind of inspired me to try something new. ehe

He wasn't meant to be anything in particular, but I was talking with @miramusu and we agreed he c...

June 2017 rewards out! + notes

Hello! I just sent out June's rewards. Cheers to a couple of new patrons who joined this month! 

I'm glad (most of) the pledges went through early enough for me to send them out since I'm going to be out for a while today.

For July... I think I want to try to include more Idol Knights work in the $5 tier. It would give me a chance to work on it a lot more while still providing Patreon material. I hope you'll enjoy seeing that kind of stuff in addition to the usual.

Aside from ...

tiny announcement: date format change

It's such a small change that I wasn't sure I wanted to make a post about just it and nothing else, but here it is.

Until now I've been using a date format that's different from Patreon's own system, such that rewards going out on July 1st would be called July 2017 rewards and so on.

... Long story short, I'm just going to be going backwards by one month and following Patreon's own convention, so the rewards going out on July 1st will be labeled as June 2017 rewards. Simple enough, just ...

comm: FFXIV

One of my commissions this month was to draw these two in their FFXIV outfits. It was a bit long because of trying to follow the costume designs, but it was fun in the end. Thanks!

Elizabeth Bathory

I don't actually play the game but I enjoy drawing the character, for some reason.

Anyway, I was always convinced painting was hard and I was awful at it, but I've been practicing a lot and I feel a bit better about it now. It's fun!

I saved some progress screenshots for a step-by-step page later. There's not much to the .PSD since it's just one layer of coloring and then a few effects layers, but I can include it if people want to see.

shrine maiden reimu

Finished over  three days, with sketching and lines the first day and coloring on the next two, something like that.

Like I mentioned previously, I tried some new things (mostly a different workflow, trying to shorten working time) and I think I like how it turned out. Reimu here is one of the better drawings I've made in basically my entire life, I think. Honest! There was a lot more knowledge that went into her making, and I learned a ton more besides.

There will be a hi-res versi...

WIP: Reimu

I've been working on this since lunch or so. I'm trying new coloring ideas with this one and I think it'll probably be done tomorrow. 

I've taken screenshots of my progress that I'll compile into a nice page for the next $1 tier rewards. Instead of the usual format, I've taken the liberty of saving screenshots of more detailed steps specific to this drawing. I hope it'll be more interesting than the other step-by-step pages that I've done in the past.

I think I'll include the .PSD i...

WIP: chieri ogata

Chieri is very sweet and  I like her a lot.

Ahem. Today is some lineart I worked on. It'll be in the $1 tier in July.

For a while now I've been trying to draw thinner lines while still keeping it dynamic and interesting to look at, but it's been a bit difficult. Today I just decided to go to the extreme and use as thin a brush as possible and see how it looks. It's a start, I guess. I want to see how it looks with colors, too.

May 2017 rewards out

Hi! I sent out this month's rewards a bit earlier,  with most pledges having been processed now. I hope you like them.

I think this month I'm really going to try to draw more things. Instead of spending hours and hours on a single drawing, I think it would be more interesting to spend a bit less on each but produce more. I would learn more and everyone would be able to see more, and I think as long as I can show my own personal touch through them, it's just as well as spending a lot of ti...

comm: Akane

Commission for May, from Tsuki ga Kirei airing right now. Thanks!

IDOL KNIGHTS: Val concept

Continuing from my earlier post about Soralie, here's one more character from her universe named Val.

Two things you might have noticed: the project is entitled Idol Knights, and it's mostly a loose concept right now. In the beginning, it will be a collection of characters in a world where knights could be said to play the roles of idols, bringing hope and inspiration to onlookers.

The project began spontaneously one day as the concept of "idols in knights' armor", or "knights i...

shimakaze

You probably know I don't paint a lot, but I'm back to trying to get better at it. I had some help from a friend to do this the other day, and I think it's going in the right direction. It's a different mindset from line drawing, isn't it?

Anyway, I'm going to keep trying to improve at it, so maybe you'll be seeing more things like this from now on.