Good evening! Birthdays are special and meant to be celebrated, especially when you are a public figure, a celebrity to be exact. Aside from having parties with family, friends, and staffs, celebrities are also filled (but more like bombarded) with tons of greetings from their fans. Some simply comment a birthday greeting while others go creative and put more effort for the special day of their favorite celebrity. They create fan arts, videos, some bake cakes and other foods, some rent billboards and huge public screens to flash their greeting, and some even give expensive gifts like land. (Wow! Whoever this fan is, I nominate him/her for the best fan in the world. Lol.)

Obviously, I can't gift a land for my favorite celebrities so in my case, I can only celebrate their birthdays with the way I can and know. And that is through drawing fan arts. I've done and shared a couple of birthday fan arts here already, and for this time, I am creating a birthday fan art for my favorite ONE OK ROCK band member, Toru.

ONE OK ROCK is one of my favorite Japanese bands. If you've been following my drawing posts, I'm sure you already know because I've mentioned this in every ONE OK ROCK fan art I post here. 😂

They're a rock band with four members where Toru is the guitarist and the leader of the band. Toru was first part of a hip hop group called "HEADS" during his early pre-teen years.

After the group disbanded, Toru formed ONE OK ROCK and also got Ryota, a co-member from the group HEADS, to be the bassist of the band. ONE OK ROCK is now on their 15th year this 2020. Good job for the band for staying strong and being active for 15 years! And of course, if there's someone who deserves the biggest credit for the band, it would be their leader. So here's a fan art I drew to celebrate his birthday last December 7.

Here's a video of Toru and Ryota when they were in the group HEADS:

Each members' birthday are always never forgotten and are celebrated by everyone who adores the band. Aside from the cake smashing, one usual way they celebrate members' birthdays is through posting a photo and writing a message on the app Instagram. The photos of Toru each member posted two days ago was where I got the idea to come up with this fan art.

Taka, the band vocalist, posted a photo of Toru wearing stacked mini party hats. Tomoya, the drummer, posted a photo of Toru and him with a cake with strawberries on top. Then Ryota, the bassist, posted some behind the scene selfies of Toru from their "Kanzen Zaitaku Dreamer" music video, a parody version of their song "Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer". The parody was made in observance of the stay at home rule to combat the spread of the covid-19 virus.

Here's the Kanzen Zaitaku Dreamer music video, in case you are curious:

And here's the original music video where they referenced the parody:

I mixed all the photos posted by the members and I came up with Toru sporting his Kanzen Zaitaku Dreamer look (He trended on Twitter after the premiere of the music video, by the way, because of this look). I also added Gachapin pigtail accessories because Gachapin has been a long joke around members and fans for Toru. He is often teased with Gachapin because of their eye similarity. Round, huge, and droopy.

Instead of making a cake smashing comic, like on Ryota's and Tomoya's birthday, I drew Toru laying on a fancy velvet-colored couch holding the cake Tomoya had given him on one hand while the other supports his head. Of course, I added the mini party hats for a more celebratory vibe.

Toru Yamashita is now 32 years old. Oh, how time flies so fast! When I started to be a fan of the band, all of them were still in their mid-20's. Lol. I even mistook them for teenagers when I first watched a video of them.

Fan arts and other stuff fans do during a celebrity's birthday may not be seen by the celebrant. It may get buried on his/her notifications that he/she may no longer notice nor find, or probably that celebrity doesn't check his/her socials during birthday. However, such effort by fans are done not only for the celebrity to see and receive a heart and appreciation in return, but they also create it for their fellow fans to enjoy the special day.

Through sharing photos and videos of celebrating the birthday, it makes the community or fan club or fan group more alive. Apart from that, it also becomes a way to meet new friends and connect with fans around the world. Such efforts also shows how creative and talented fans are. :)

I was originally creating a comic art for Toru's birthday but due to time constraints because I tend to postpone things a lot, I ended up drawing this. It's still nice though, right?

So for the behind the scenes of this drawing, here is the drawing process.

My apologies, if the couch looked weird, I just drew what's on my mind and I no longer have time to look for references. Lol.

For the background, I used a brush which has a heart and diamond pattern. Then for the diamond, I locked its layer and colored it in rainbow colors just to add more colors to the overall look of the drawing. I also drew a pattern to the open space of the background so it isn't just plain-looking. I don't know if you can see it because they're only tiny "x" which looked like a checkered pattern from afar. And of course, I topped the drawing with an oil paint texture which is available on the Clip Studio Assets.

Here's a closer look to my drawing. Since this is a rush drawing, I have little to no time to check for tiny messy lines. Anyway, they're almost unnoticeable so I guess it's alright. Ha. Ha.

That's all for my fan art drawing for Toru's birthday. I am notorious for posting late fan arts and so I'm very happy that I was able to finish and post this art on my Instagram account a few minutes before his birthday ended. 😁 Here's Toru's Instagram, by the way.

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