Eiri and Shuichi
Tropical Call (C'mere, Brat)
An A/U Gravitation/Liquid Rodent picture

This is the second of the series using a photograph as a background. This time the photo is a shot outside the condo where we stayed in Hawaii. The pose was completely out of the brain with no references used except for my own hands.

This is another traditional drawing with #F, #HP and #2B pencils and smeared using stumps. Drawing was scanned and the brightness/contrast adjusted. A photo of the view from the condo in Hawaii, taken by the onna, was used for window scene. Photoshop built-in texture was used for walls. Curtain was hand-drawn and added. Opacity was adjusted to make the curtain sheer.

This image has a little background story with it. In this pic, S is talking to the planet caretakers on the vid-phone. E walks up behind S to grab him away from the conversation and take him off for some frolic.

A little ficlet will be added to this page when it gets transcribed from the notes.

As I was setting this image up for posting, I remembered working on a coloured version way back when. So I went looking for it.

When I found it I realized the colour work was pretty dreadful, in my opinion. I had used the airbrush tool on the skin and it did not look as good as some of my past pieces (some still needing to be posted). S's hair looked okay but E's hair was just a flat blob of yellow.

So I saved the file with a new name and started colouring over what I had done, but this time using the cel shading techniques I have learned from oekaki and the hair technique I use now when I colour hair. The boys look much better now with the better shading. Since it is an alternate universe and they are on a tropical pleasure planet, they can even have tanned skin.

While I was colouring, I looked at the drawing itself and came to the conclusion it sucks for the most part. S's upper arms are just WRONG! I remember how difficult it was to draw those skinny arms after doing pumped-up DBZ boys. I considered taking the pic out of the portfolio and redrawing the arms as I was colouring this, then stopped myself. One of the purposes of this website is to show the growth and progression of my artwork, styles and techniques. Going back and redoing the crap defeats that purpose.

So I am letting sleeping bishies lie and not touch the old stuff, as tempting as it may be. I may consider a compromise and redo the drawing on a digital copy of a piece one of these years.