artistbettyanne | In B 4 "I See Wat U Did Thar"! (Reply)

Ugh. Yesterday was only a mildly productive day once again. The big breakthrough for me was finally drawing larger again - it took me two restarts on the sketch of the princesses to manage it, but at least I now seem to be beyond that particular mental block. Now I just have to turn myself back into a drawing machine so I can get the rest of my art done in the next month or so. ^^;

With yesterday's sketches, I have finished the characters I chose from Mikiyo Tsuda's books (Princess*Princess, Princess*Princess+, and Day of Revolution). This also rounds out the 22 figures in the original layout I'm working from.

Tohru, Yuujirou and Mikoto are replacing the cats (Artemis, Luna and Diana) in this pose. It worked well for them - the three princesses spend a great deal of time together, and Tohru and Yuujirou frequently play off of one another in a manner similar to Luna and Artemis. I had to give Mikoto his pouty face, even though he'd started using the princess smile more regularly by the end of the series - it's just too cute on him, and it was really cute in this pose as well.

Yuujirou's face is too small...I really suck at drawing faces that are longer rather than round or acorn shaped. ^^; I'll tweak that a bit when I ink it. Otherwise, I'm pretty happy with this one, particularly in how well the "Princess Wonderland" dresses came out.

Megumi (Day of Revolution and Princess*Princess) replaces VesVes/Sailor Vesta. For being so similar to Sailor Senshi uniforms, I find girls' school uniforms to be almost as annoying to draw as boys' uniforms. XD It also seems weird this particular uniform design only has the two sets of buttons above the waist, but I triple-checked it against the manga, looking at every image that showed the front of the uniform top, and that's all it has. Not that it matters...most of it will be hidden from view anyway. ^^;

Kiriya (Princess*Princess+) replaces PallaPalla/Sailor Pallas. I like the dynamic Pallas and Ceres have going in this layout, and Kiriya and Tomoe's dynamic is kind of a ramped-up version of it, so I've paired them up here. I drew them separately, however, because all of those ruffles are hard enough to keep track of on one princess at a time. ^^;

Kiriya's kind of got the Exorcist thing going on with his head there, but Pallas kind of did too. I'm going to be touching that up a bit once it's inked - he's partially eclipsed by Ranko-chan's hair, anyway.

Tomoe completes the layout, replacing CereCere/Sailor Ceres. His face seems a bit too big - I think I needed to bring the hairline down a bit more. More touch-ups in Photoshop. ^^; I also didn't do that great of a job of conveying that Tomoe's dress is longer than Kiriya's, but most of Kiriya's dress is hidden in the end anyway.

I seem to be good at drawing "average" people, but not people who are tall/short/fat/skinny/etc. ^^; Somehow, I manage to do best with features that are like mine (which is why all of my barefoot characters have the same weird knobbly toes I have XD), and I'm still struggling to push past that. NEED MOAR REFERENCES. XP

And now for the obvious "I SEE WAT U DID THAR" moment - the composition thus far, with all of the characters draw to this point in it:

Oh, oh, do you see what I did there? XD There's space to fit a few more characters in! :D

I sometimes think of these things in advance. .____. Not frequently, mind you, but it does happen from time to time.

Now I'm off to shower, have lunch, and resume drawing. I'm beating my own ass to get the rest of the 30 characters sketched today. :/