Rain under Lights

(♪ Fear and Loathing - Marina and the Diamonds)

Inspired by the story Hare Tokidoki Yami by Tamura Yumi and an incident in my real life.


This doodle is a about the depression of a high-school girl. She sits there under the rain of city life, staring at nothingness with fear and loathing. As a high-schooler she is certainly not supposed to smoke like that but cigarettes have become a close friend and a temporary solace for her.

Well, the more she smokes, however, the more she gets depressed after that.

 Working
I remember I was very traumatized after the incident, so much that I was scribbling crazily on the sketch to let out all of my emotion. I hardly ever do that since, every artist knows that, pressing too hard on the paper may cause it to be spoiled or even torn, which means your painting is ruined.

On the other side, I enjoy many experiences I have while coloring this painting on Photoshop. It is frustrating half of the time as I jump into soooo many problems but still I have learned a lot in Photoshoping. Especially when coloring the lights in BG, I like working with neon and high saturation level color so I tried some trickery technique with it. It's fun to see the transformation of the painting before and after the technique haha.

About processing, I am too lazy to make a wips so sorry. But to talk about it briefly, I basically sketch out the idea with pencil and line a bit with black ink ball point pen then scan it on Photoshop. In coloring stage I prefer using shades and light separately with main colors instead of putting different saturation and brightness level of one color for shading. In short, I make layers only paint with B&W, black for shades, white for lights and highlights, then set to overlay mode for each layer ( or adjust transparent level to about 20 - 40% ). Under those layer are base color layers. The BG is made independently. Then do a little touch up like adding large shade over the girl to create depth, crop the painting to fix the stupidly wrong proportion of the painting,..so on.

Another inspiration for this painting was the famous josei Deep Love by Yoshi. The story is about the lives of Japanese people in a modern, developed yet cruel and aimless world where their dignities and loves and dreams have long been forgotten and mistreated. Yet they still try their best to live on and find their own peace. However they mostly end up in death or insanity, which might be a better future for them than living dead and suppressed. It's kinda stuck; That's the only thing I hate about the story though. This story seriously moves me to sea of tears, but I still haven't finish the whole series yet  since I don't really steep myself in a dark and melancholy atmosphere again; I have already had enough with Lana Del Rey's sad songs lately.

I hate smoking people.

Tool
HB Mars Lumograph Steadler Pencil
"A" black ball point pen. It's cheap and easy to use but cannot draw smooth lines and curves like G drawing-pen.
Photoshop 7
An old and almost broken computer mouse and keyboard. yup.

Other post
DevianArt

Thanks for reading :x Ask anything you want to. I won't answer haha.

.Blambodee.