30DoD: Blue Sorrow

CONTEST REMINDER -3 Days left to join!: Win Points and Artworks from me! Interested? Then read further!!

You can win requests and , so I guess it's worth taking a look. The theme is "Colours" and you have to draw at least one of my characters (to make things short ), for more information and the rules follow this link please: [link]

I'm also thinking about expanding the contest once more due to my exams kicking in soon. Tell me your opinion (expansion would be till February 15th) here: [link]

Good morning folks, I actually woke up and looked at this picture again I'm still quite disappointed of the turn of events, however I guess a little longer artist comment is what this picture deserves after all. With less rage aswell.

Like the pictures before this one also belongs to my 30 Days of Drawing challenge. I started coloring the picture one or two days before I had to leave Berlin and the lovely =ShadowSinty last week, due to university and me being utterly lazy during the break I was however unable to finish this picture before yesterday. In fact I stayed up very long to finish it, although I was tired and seriously needed some sleep (students don't get that much sleep besides their breaks you know? |D In fact it's not because of partying the shit out of myself, it's more like my profs think that releasing all teh homework would actually be good for students...). That was definately not a good idea. I was/am really satisfied with the overall coloring although many things went not as expected. I don't know if it is the paper or just me, but while coloring and especially shading I couldn't get rid of the feeling that something was wrong about the paper, I was most often unable to create smooth color gradients with my markers in the way I'm used to and many parts (for example her blue clothes) got smudgy on instant when shading with the darkest colors. I can live with that though...
Worse is/was the "Opaque White accident" that happened afterwards. In fact I wanted to use a splatter effect on the sky, so it would look like stars - a nice feature to the overall quite dark picture to my mind. Thus I spent almost 30 minutes covering all parts where no white color should end up with paper, hankerchiefs and so on. Then I tried out the net I bought which should work well for splattering colors. It should - it didn't, at least for Opaque White. At first everything went according to plan and I got a nice, fine splatter effect. And then... *sigh* three thick drop ended up on the picture as the color gathered on the lower side of the net, which wasn't visible to me and ruined it all. And with thick I mean thick, it's size covered half of one of the buildings in the background - something I really didn't wish for the picture to end up like. So I removed the paper mask quickly and removed most of the drops by using wet hankerchiefs and little sponges. Unfortunately this accident left white smudgy traces on places where you couldn't argue that it's just a light reflection in the windows glass. Also I knitted it several times, and due to the water the paper got wavy... In an desperate attempt to save the whole picture I used the splattering method I was used to do and received what I submitted as finished piece - and hell, I was fed up. Still having to clean my room for another hour and being disappointed about what has happened I went to bed then after submitting this piece after all.

I really put a lot of time and effort in this picture as I liked the sketch and the lineart to begin with. I really like drawing and coloring Raven, although the dark colors are always a challenge for me when it comes to traditional pictures, especially marker coloring. And I was quite satisfied with myself until I ruined it all, which I still blame myself and my stupid ideas for *sigh* I believe many people can relate to that feeling, because probably everyone has experienced it at least once in life so far :shrugs:

In any way, I still kind of like the picture in general as said before. I am satisfied with the sketch, the lineart and the coloring overall. I even liked how the town came out, although I didn't want to turn out that dark in the beginning. Because of that I thought about redoing this, what keeps me from doing so is the amount of COPIC color and time I already put into this picture. So, for now, I won't redo this picture. On the one hand I know that I wouldn't be happy with ver2, also I simply lack the time to do stuff like redoing pictures at the moment *still has some pictures of the challenge left to be done* Guess I have to live with this version for now then :/

To explain some more things about this picture... it's like a younger version of Raven, already being a shadow, but not for too long already. Her hair is a little brighter as usual how many probably already noticed, also her hair cut is different (also due to the hood). And she doesn't look happy at all Raven is most often acting that she feels alright while she actually isn't happy about her fate. I tried to picture that side of her in this drawing somehow, since I haven't done so before. Blue as a supporting color for cold and lonelyness seemed adequate to me, thus I only used shades of blue and cold gray for this picture - expect for Raven's eyes. I also don't want to add the pattern of Ravens boots and clothes at the moment, guess it would ruin the "this picture is overall blue and gray" statement. Yeah

Guess I put everything into words that came to my mind after getting up and looking at this picture again. And now, up, up and away - let's learn for the upcoming exams and prepare for going to work =A=