press space to switch between the two images ^u^ so i finally pulled the drawing tablet back out for the first time in weeks! i was inspired by lavendertown on youtube, who made some awesome art videos that got my digital juices flowing again. i had been working mainly with pencil, markers, and watercolors as of late, and it's been fun to explore new mediums, but it was also refreshing to feel the familiar weight of my tablet's pen in my hand. i was also surprised to find lineart forming on the screen as well as an actual non-headshot for once! i'll explain a bit of background for the two pictures below, but overall i was a little surprised at how much my digital style was affected by my experience with traditional mediums. 1. this is not just a random braid. oh no. well, at first it kind of was.... ahem. anyway, this is the braid of a character i developed a few months ago when i unleashed my imagination upon a poor, innocent piece of paper and created a very dramatic story in a short series of drawings that consisted of two sisters who were thrust into a world of animal-human hybrids. one sister, whom i found a fitting name for- aileen- received mouse ears and a tail as well as angel wings (which is another long story, but i promise there is a meaning behind that other than just "i wanna stick some wings on her") while the other sister, pictured here, (who remains unnamed) was transformed into some sort of strange canine-ish creature with a long, thin tail that had a tassel on the end. don't ask me, it's the imagination's fault. anyway said sister is younger and normally has two braids with straight bangs, which are colored as seen with brown roots and ends with blue in between and a purple streak (or two depending on my mood). anyrate the younger canine sister shown here dies in this alternate world. i blame the imagination. it's a tragic death and the older sister struggles to survive in the world on her own; both because she mourns her sister and because she now has no one to turn to. but long story short she gets back to this world and they live happily ever after (though there is some more dramatic stuff that happens but by that time my imagination was running out on this particular storyline and it was becoming slightly... forced, i guess? anyway i like the original story better although there aren't many real details, just the emotions really) so yeah that's the super long backstory behind this braid that i probs could've just summed up by saying "it's the braid of a character that i designed a while ago" but y'know why take the easy route when you can write a huge paragraph on it 2. this is marinette from miraculous ladybug! and no worries, there isn't a [super] huge backstory here. originally i was just drawing a random person, implementing some of the character design tips from lavendertown, with brown hair and green eyes. but then i colored her coat red and the buttons black, and that is where my whole life changed. lol jk it just looked kind of lady-buggy and, as a hardcore miraculous ladybug fan, it appeared to me far more lady-buggy than any normal person would probably see it. anywho i could've just changed the colors for like the bazillionth time but no this was going to be marinette now. so i made her hat lady-buggy too and her bag and then i changed the hue of her hair and eyes and boom winter design of marinette. plus kudos to you past self you accidentally made her hair pretty much the right length with the side bangs too! lol anyway pretty happy with how this turned out ^u^ (although *cough cough* i did get kind of lazy with shading/coloring her coat it looks terrible in the high-quality version) so that's that i suppose! you can find better quality images here! http://imaginationsplayground.weebly.com/marinette--french-braid.html
