you can totally tell my bias.

1. I love this manga so much I had to do some fanart for it, haha. This is the draft/sketch thingy done on some notebook paper. It sat on my desk for months before I started working on it.

2. I was trying to do some very clean and neat lineart this time. Started with Aya and Manaka, from left to right because I'm right-handed. I took a long time with Manaka because his position is so tricky.

3. As you can see, lots of changes happen between the draft and the actual lineart. The sizes of each character turned out differently from what I imagined but obviously it would hurt to much to rub them out and draw them again, so I kept it like this. Aya is not holding her glasses like in the draft and I completely changed Satsuki's pose and angle. I actually drew Tsukasa twice, I rubbed it out and did her again, because I wasn't entirely happy with the first lineart.

4. I always paint skin tone first. Always. I also find it one of my favourite parts to paint.

5. I did the blue of Aya and Satsuki's sailor fuku, Tsukasa's jumper vest and Manaka's uniform. I was unhappy with Manaka's uniform and still am, really. I always have trouble with painting with black watercolour for some reason, it always looks so streaky and gross. I really liked the way the sailor fuku turned out, especially with the stripes, even though I wasn't entirely sure about their blue colour. I really liked Tsukasa's vest, but spent some time agonising over its overly yellowness and then orangeness.



6. It was actually really hard finding colour references for everyone's uniforms and clothes. I was working off the manga since I never saw the anime, but obviously the manga's in black and white so that doesn't really help. Even though I looked up a lot of colour references from Kawashita-sensei's art, she draws the girls in so many different school uniforms it doesn't really help. Sometimes she also uses very different shades of colour in each picture so it's very hard to match. So I believe Tsukasa's skirt and bow are too green, even though the reference picture I was following had them green. And Aya and Satsuki should have had a darker blue colour.

7. I actually think I did pretty well with the hair this time. Hooray! I liked painting Aya's and think it turned out the best, along with Manaka's. Tsukasa's is more yellow than blonde, but if you compare it to the anime, it's not that bad.

8. I was really indecisive with background colour for ages. And I always hold my breath when painting eyes because I hate to stuff them up. Tsukasa's and Manaka's look the best, Aya's eyelashes got too thick so now she looks really bored or tired. Ugh. Anywho, here's the finished product:



I think I'm generally satisfied with it, although it turned out very different from what I imagined, mainly in terms of colour scheme. I also don't feel I completely did these characters justice so I'll probably end up doing more Ichigo 100% fanart. :P