Art is never finished: Lady Eboshi

The never-ending feeling of “It’s not finished.”

I’ve had this piece sitting on my desk for a while now, and even now I feel like it’s not finished. At some point I tell myself to leave it alone before I overwork it and end up ruining it, but I can’t help but feel, “there’s something missing.”

This feeling comes out the most when I desperately want to portray a feeling, emotion, or thought and I’ve fallen short of doing so by just an inch or three.

Insert feelings and doubts of an artist who can’t properly art

Ok by on the real, let me show you some of the progress of this piece. I actually did some proper planning for this piece for once (a rarity that I hope will someday blossom into something that I will practice doing). Usually I’m an impatient Speedy McSpeed trying to get to the next piece, but this time I wanted to take some time to plan it out.

My original thought process was I wanted to do a “rising sun”-esque (it’s the Japanese flag ) influence with Lady Eboshi. She represents so much in Princess Mononoke, and I wanted to portray all these sorts of feelings

However, when I did these quick colour composition swatches, I noticed that I started to prefer an actual gold instead of the red for the background. (I started the swatching from right to left since I’m left handed) . It’s actually a metalic watercolour that I wish I could somehow show digitally!

media: gansai tambi watercolours

Doing this piece makes me really want to start revisit my old my childhood influences and really see how they affect me now as well as pay some attributions to them! It’s really hard for me to do fan art for series, shows, movies, books, etc. that I really enjoy. I’m really afraid to ruin what I like– but it’ll be nice to revisit the same pieces later when I’ve leveled up and see how much better I can do them. 🙂

What are some of your most influential series?

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