Anime Drawing of a Victorian maiden circa 1850
Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)
This is one of my many cute maidens in pretty dresses. Since I was little, I used to fill up my notebook with crude renditions of maidens in cute dresses. None of these notebooks survived the moves. Now, I finally have enough space to have something that resembles an artist studio. My house has an extra room that we ended up turning into an office, slash studio. I rarely hang out there because the lighting there is rather weak. It is mainly for storage purposes. The light is pretty strong in the main room of the house. I get plenty of light from the garden windows, and the one leading to the front patio. There is green all around. The funny thing is that I rarely hang out in the garden. I have a bit of a phobia of bugs, and the mosquitoes always bite me. Florida has a serious wild life problem, and now they have super pythons. It is freaking the ecologists out. Also, the red tide is killing all the fishes and manatees. It is real sad and all that.
This brings me back to this drawing. I had recently gotten some new gel pens. I decided to try them out. I tried to angle the drawing in a way that it was noticeable. I guess in the future I suppose, I should use the flash. That is the thing about gel pens. The sparkly types are only noticeable in angles, and in the real world. I think also the flash helps. The jelly pens were made by Sakura. The more defined lines were made using Stabilo. Before starting with the inking, I first drew a pencil version, and then I traced over it with the pens. The pencil I used was Royal and Langnickel. The nameless coloring pencils I got from Art 101. The skin color was drawn with a jumbo pencil from the Lyra company. The darker golden color was a Derwent Coloursoft ochre pencil. Lastly, the lines on the skin, was drawn with a Sakura Pigma Micron Pen. Lastly, the Paper is Leda Art Supply.
As you may have noticed, I used a lot of different art supplies to form this one complete drawing. I suppose this is the essence of mixed media. I am not afraid to mix my art brands together. Sometimes it helps to make one beautiful, solid complete product. As you may have noticed, the coloring pencil I use the most often is the color black. I have already used up the black pencil in my set of Coloursoft Pencils, and in my Art 101 set. I just find that it combines well with just about any other color. Then again, I used to draw in black and white before making the transition to other colors. After not thinking things through a lot, I think I will now just focus on my drawings and other serious art projects. The public tends to react better to it. I guess not a lot of people consider photography an artform. Then again, I mostly take tourist photos, with my super expensive camera. I am getting close to the end of my pretty dress series.
I originally started the series to amuse myself. I normally did that when I was a little girl. Now, at a professional level I decided to take a whack at it again. It is basically an archive of the best dresses I have seen across the ages. I tend to avoid the ancient times, because I am not a big fan of that era. I also do not have a lot of 20th century outfits. Recently, my brother suggested I published it as a thing. I mean, technically it is a sourcebook. I created it as my own personal source book. When I publish my series, you will also have access to it in book format. It just makes it easy to browse through it. After this series, I think I will do a sourcebook of people poses, and other sketches of the like all in bright colors. When I start it, you will be the first people to see it come to fruition. All in all, I think mangaka artists should study the human body. It just makes the poses and expressions appear more natural, even when your drawings are as unnatural as possible. I even use real people as references when I draw chibis, believe it or not. Well, this is just my mangaka aesthetics. You do your own thing. I mean, there is more than one right way of doing things, as far as art is concerned.
