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Day Seventeen. Black Bass

Figuring out how Adagio’s hair works. Oddly as I was working on this, some others on staff were talking in mod chat about how odd her hair is. Like whipped cream, pilled high, but yet also reinforced by slinkies. Trying to get her canonical hair is like drawing a thick comforter on top of her head, the layers of dense fabric cascading down the sides of her head in tight waves like curls.

I also tried the ‘balls of light in the eyes’ style of eye on the lower right figure … wow I don’t like that look. I mean, sure - I get it. It’s more canonical to the show bible and really works well for some artists. But for me it just feels like I’m doing something horribly wrong.

I’m going to stick with the manga style eyes I’m used to. I would like to maybe get to a Johji Manabe style eye, but if you go too far that way you end up with the ‘negative curve’ U-Jin style eye, and I’m already getting accused of stealing U-Jin’s nipples (which was, completely honest here, never ever intentional - I wanted to be ’the butt guy’ but somehow ended up being the ’draw more breasts’ and ’more feet now!’ guy), and my fondness for muscular ladies with firmer attitudes is obviously the Johji Manabe seeking up on me … so … yeah.

^{(Johji Manabe Dracoon Dragon Princess Soldier)}

Not sure where the eye I draw is actually from. I suspect - if I’m being completely honest - it’s from an old stuffed toy I had when I was a wee chiseller on me mam’s lap. It was a beagle with a pocket to hold my pajamas for me during the day, and he had enormous eyes with that kind of ‘crescent moon’ eye.

As for the hair, that’s got to be Kōsuke Fujishima. I mean, come on - his hair is all over everything I draw:

^{(my attempt to recreate a scene from Aa, Megami-sama)}

LOOK at that HAIR! Oh my GOSH he is the MASTER of hair! I can’t even PRETEND to be able to come close to that insane volume and movement!

Still, I guess through it all, even though to me everything I draw looks like pieces of art from people who’s work I idolize, I guess I do have a style. I keep trying to ‘draw things right’, use the lessons I learned in college, find ‘my own unique drawing style’, and ‘do the thing you’re supposed to do with this thing when you draw it’ like they taught us in art school.

But I keep ending up drawing what I draw, the way that I draw it.

So … I guess … that’s a style, right? I mean … I drew this cartoon in 2002. And … I kind of feel like I haven’t changed at all in all these years. The eyes, the shoulders, the hints of musculature (such as it is) … all seem the same. To me it looks like something I drew yesterday.

^{(from the forever ago when I did web comics)}

I do feel like I can get my figures to move a little better, get some “oint” in the “joints”. But over all, everything I’m drawing now looks so much like what I drew two decades ago.

And … that’s ok, right?

… Maybe I should just shut up and keep drawing …