It’s something of a recurring theme lately.

Self Critique: Knuckles on raised hand should not be as pronounced. Something tells me that I should’ve put a texture on the skirt. On the hand touching the brush, that raised finger should’ve be lowered.

This is something that I’ve been wanting to do since October and planned to work on after finishing the 80s WFT. This girl here is Chelsí Pleinair, an original character that I created before joining dA. She (and almost every original girl I’ve drawn this year), comes from a series of hentai stories I attempted way back between 2005 and 2006 , all of which I  abandoned. However I salvaged all the characters I created from them, in case I want to draw them again one day and utilize them for shorter stories unrelated to each other. Chelsí here was a schoolgirl with a French painter theme. Now she’s just a French painter. She also had an older variation to her name, though given my now admittedly horrendous naming schemes in my late teen years (at least compared to now), I feel like I might get a brain aneurysm if I type out what it was. Given, the first name is still the same, just with faux French spelling now. And thanks to taking Art History classes during college, I can at least give her a last name that makes some sense, as “pleinair” (or “en plain air”, in open air) is an impressionist painting style originating in France that saw painters essentially working outdoors and painting what they saw. Chelsí though paints indoors and out.

As for the design, not much changed from the original. Chelsí’s loose sweater is now fitted and ribbed, and her hair has curled ends. There was an attempt about two years ago to draw her, but it went nowhere and was scrapped. The old design (and current) was inspired by a small set of dolls that my older sis had collected called Lollipop Girls.
At the time, I was looking at anything I can to draw inspiration from, and the French girl they had was it. erica.cz/imagesbarbie/loga/log… (the one on the far right)

She then got attached to the aforementioned hentai as a schoolgirl. When that was abandoned, she got added to the character pool. So now I’m bringing her back, hopefully as a poster girl for 2016 and onward. As for the recurring theme, it’s been something that’s been popping up personally, of me thinking of and picking fanart that barely anyone draws and that no one expects. Hopefully that’ll continue into the new year as well, especially with my interactions with Japanese retro-ero pixel artists over on Pixiv. The background I left mostly blank, like a blank canvas an artist faces when starting a new pic. As for what that is on the floor, it’s the background I drew for for Sailing Through The Sea. deadphoenx.deviantart.com/art/…

On a sidenote, while doing this I was running into some problems with my Intuos4 tablet. For a while I’ve been wearing cotton wristbands on my drawing hand to alleviate some of the wrist pain I get sometimes. My pen was going nuts, multistroking at different times. It didn’t dawn on me until by mere coincidental accident I realized that my wristband was generating static on the tablet’s surface, throwing off the electro-magnetic signal the tablet sends to the pen and back. The “coincidental accident” was switching the spring nib for the rubber one thinking it was a pressure problem, and forgetting to put my wristband on a couple of times. The tablet problems stopped, and I no longer were the wristband while drawing. So word of warning for any graphic tablet users: don’t wear cotton wristbands while drawing.

Done on GIMP 2.8. Intuos4 tablet used.
Chelsí Pleinair is (c) DeadPhoenX. Permission not required for non-profit purposes, but credit with link back is needed.