Jujutsu Kaisen anime has recently ended and even though I still haven't seen this show, I've heard a lot of good feedback about it. There's a lot of hype going on around this anime and it's making me curious so I have decided to watch it next after reading the final chapter of Attack on Titan which is coming out in three days.
Surprisingly, the character presented by ArtPark for last week's Do This in Your Style was a character from Jujutsu Kaisen, Nobara Kugisaki.
I have never drawn a character from a show I haven't watched because I feel like I wouldn't be able to draw them properly, like I could miss some details or maybe draw the character portraying a wrong emotion. Of course, the practical solution to it is to begin watching the anime but I have so little time to do that. As much as I wouldn't want too see spoilers, I got no choice or else I wouldn't be able to join the weekly art challenge. For me to lessen major spoilers, what I did was search for short video clips of Nobara. Well, it took me two videos of Nobara to at least get a grasp of her character. With those information and observation, I was able to come up with this drawing.
NOBARA KUGISAKI
Based from the short video clips I have watched, I can feel that Nobara is a strong and serious lady who can also be funny but doesn't know. I'm kind of interested with her character, actually. She also looks pretty. I like how one side of her hair is tucked behind her ear. I also saw that her weapon are hammer and nails. The hammer she uses also has a heart on it which made me think that Nobara could be someone who is girlish. I don't know what the story of Jujutsu Kaisen is about though I've a clip where they were fighting an alien-looking monster, so maybe the show is somewhere on the category of shows like Parasyte?
I had initial thoughts of drawing Nobara doing a pose with her weapons but I had less than a day left before the deadline. Of course, I wouldn't spend all those hours sitting and drawing and so I opted to draw a portrait of Nobara. Her eyes are serious yet charming on the anime so I tried to translate those features in my drawing, except that I made them look a bit more beautiful. I wanted Nobara to appear a bit more girlish on my drawing. It made me happier when I noticed that she wears lipstick because that means I can add colors to her lips add some shine. Hihi!
If I am not mistaken, one of the signs of her power are the rose tattoos on one side of her body, from her face to her arms. It looks cool for me so I added that too. Then on the background, I drew some red roses too. Not sure what her affinity with roses is, however. Maybe it would be explained in the anime?
This drawing is one of my few decent drawings and portrait drawings. Why is it that the drawings I do spontaneously end up looking better than those I intentionally want to look good? Lol. But while drawing Nobara, I was envisioning Ladowska's art style so maybe that's why it turned out good, but I am nowhere near her art greatness. 😂 I like her art style a lot.
This is one of the Nobara video clips I watched to be able to draw this piece, by the way.
DRAWING PROCESS
Here's a five-step process of how I drew Nobara Kugisaki on Clip Studio Paint.
From a rough sketch, I proceeded with doing the line art with thin pencil followed by coloring with solid colors using watercolor brush then shading with the same watercolor brush. I used a softer brush for adding the highlights and setting the blending mode to Add Glow. To finish my drawing, I added an oil paint texture and set the blending mode to overlay then reducing its opacity around 25%.
Medium: Digital (Wacom Intuos)
Program: Clip Studio Paint
Time: Approximately 5 Hours
Gif made on Photoshop CS6
Wish I can draw this way more often and improve. I felt like this is just a stroke of luck. Hopefully one day I can consistently draw in this style. I like this piece a lot and have been staring at it for an unhealthy amount of time. Lol. And because I've been staring at it a lot, I noticed that I drew her ear way too high. Will improve on that too next time! :)