Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
This might be the last Art post I do so I thought I'd make it special and share the art I did for Sean's birthday this year! He's been using the same old profile picture on Whatsapp - an old painting I did of the two of us that looks like this:
I did this 5 years ago during covid and I remember it was tough since we were in lockdown and stuck in a small studio apartment together. It was hard to hide things from each other then so I had to work on this painting in secret while Sean was sleeping.
Sean has been using that painting on his Whatsapp profile ever since I gifted it to him and he uses it a lot for work, so I thought it was high time for a makeover! I wanted to do an anime portrait for him since I've been playing around with Arcane-style portraits.
I asked Sean which anime pose he likes and I know he really likes Kento Nanami from Jujutsu Kaisen and I found these references that looked really cool.
It's actually coincidental that Sean went to try on a suit that was the exact colour scheme as Nanami's years before we watched the anime together.
So initially I did a half body sketch just tracing Nanami and I thought I could just alter the pose from here to make it more similar to Sean.
Then I tried this pose instead but it still looked more like Nanami.
I tried to make him do a thumbs-up since Sean likes to do that pose a lot but it still looked off.
So I decided to try just drawing Sean with an anime look first and then building off that.
I wanted to draw in his muscles too and tried tracing this photo but it looked weird.
I also tried a different style that works with the Arcane portrait but it didn't look good.
Eventually I settled on working off this reference and adapting the hair to suit Sean.
He really likes this Hawaiian shirt with Snoopy's brother Olaf on it so I thought it'd be perfect to draw him wearing it for his portrait.
I coloured in his dyed hair from last time so it would match the shirt as well, and added in his silly favourite characters on the shirt.
After adding in some colours and shadows we get this!
For the background I wanted to do a simple one with DDR arrows I just wasn't sure of the colour scheme so it took a while to find the right one.
Eventually I settled on this sunset theme since orange is his favourite colour and it contrasted the blue. I was just scared that it would blend into his skin too much but I think it still works.
I showed this to him for his birthday and he absolutely loved it! I was so happy since it took quite a lot of work. After he changed his profile picture I think he got a lot of compliments from his colleagues which made me really glad too.
I'm so glad he loved it since I couldn't really think of anything else to draw for him. I definitely still need more practice drawing portraits but we'll get there.
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
