Eiri and Shuichi
Summer Sunday Morning on the Porch

I started this one on 5/28/05 and it was amazing how quickly it came together and demanded to be completed. I worked on it one night in the hotel during A-Kon 2005, too. Cons are so artistically inspiring.

I am pretty pleased with the way this one turned out. I was testing a new eye shape on Eiri here. I was also seeing if I could actually draw kimono, especially the section around the neck area. I studied various Fruits Basket manga before working on the neckline. It came out okay.

After I scanned this at 150 dpi and greyscale, I added a different built-in Photoshop texture to each kimono so they would look a little differently next to each other. Then I built two patterns using the Orient pattern font and added them to the boys' kimono. All of these layers' opacities were taken down to between 5% to 15% so the drawing could be seen underneath. Also, the layer modes were changed to Multiply so the white would be knocked out.

I used a photo of the skyline from my con hotel room on the 18th floor for the background. I basically cut the photo in half and put the two tall buildings on the outside of the drawing to frame the boys. Then I added a Reticulation filter to the building layer to break it into more simple shapes and colours. I added another layer of the right building to the area under Eiri's face because that section was all black in the original photo. The opacity was taken down to about 50% to keep the dark buildings in the background from overwhelming the picture.

The porch wall was made with a built-in Photoshop texture and taking the opacity down to about 15% so it would be a light concrete.

I had thought about adding a design to the fan but I decided to leave it alone.