Seven years, and still here!

Good lord, has it really been seven years since this blog first went live? Believe it or not, it is! For the first time since 2016, I'm actually going to commemorate my blog's anniversary! 🥳🎉 As part of this celebration, I made some art (though it was for my Twitch channel rather than my blog 😅) and took a second look on some of my past art on stream this last weekend.

Thank you to everyone who has been supporting me for the last seven years, especially those who have remained steadfastly by my side and watched my art grow since then. While I had many lows, I find myself achieving new heights in art, and I look forward to achieving many more in the future.

That said, I do hope you will all continue to join me as I continue ever forward in my art journey. I'm excited to discover and learn new art techniques, bring more of the worlds, characters, and creatures in my mind to life on canvas, and share them all with you for our collective enjoyment.

Cheers to another year of art! 🍹

-Zip

Chill Art Vibes - Twitch Banner

Art made for a new banner on my Twitch channel, featuring me and my Nidorino buddy 🏁

If you're not following yet, come do so over here. I stream every Saturdays and Sundays at 1:30 a.m. (GMT +8)! 📡

The Font of Igusa

The Font of Igusa (井草の泉) is a secluded spring located in Hikou-Tou (飛行島), the land of the Ehn-Gu in the Aevis Archipelago. Its clean and pure waters is said to have healing properties, able to soothe and cleanse both body and spirit, and is long sought after by both adventurers and Ehn-Gu apothecaries alike. However, only very few know where it is in the Igusa Forest, and to safeguard the spring's purity from greed and pollution, its exact location has been kept a closely guarded secret.

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You know how you just have this idea for an art piece and it's just so vivid in your mind? The kind that just stays plastered in your brain, nagging at you to just put it on canvas or forever hold your peace? Because this painting has certainly been one of them. Maybe you don't know how to get there either like I was when I started, but you strive to figure out how anyway.

Needless to say, I was doing a lot of research to get this piece right. A lot of my time was spent watching Marc Brunet's videos on YouTube about line art and coloring. I had to redo the line art four times; there were a lot of adjustments I needed to do and I wouldn't settle for less on her line art. Her hair was initially flat, and then I drew inspiration from Shilin's art style when it came to hair (her OC Blackbird was on my mind in that part of the process, actually).

From her line art, I wasn't sure exactly what direction I wanted to take when it came to the environment's style. Vir turned out incredible but the background was my deal-breaker. Was I supposed to do the same thing I did with Vir's line art? What would it look like if I just painted it the way I normally did? So I spent most of that at first trying to see if the latter worked for her style, and I was reaaally binging on my references for guidance. Much to my surprise, it worked just right! 🌈

Much was learned from this piece. It has introduced me to the wonders of the Hard Light blend mode--I've finally cracked that code of how to make the lines blend with the skin! I've also learned what transfer on a brush is, and how important that is if I want to nail this new style in the future.

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Personally, Viresco has been, for a long time, an image of the chaotic and the sexual, broken by her past yet made whole through experience. In that raging tempest embodying all of what she is, lies a calm like any other storm--a person at peace of what she has become, accepting all facets of herself, even her inner darkness.

Yet I don't believe I've featured her enough in my art to properly portray all of what she is. I'd definitely like to change that though, starting with this piece. 😌