Digital art with Note 10 Plus - Untying the butterfly knot

Word vomit

Being a hobbyist while at the same time working full time as a computational scientist makes me think.

When I was a kid, I loved to draw. I grew up watching my big sister @arrliinn draw doodles; I swear sometimes she would shove me a pen and a paper to draw something just so I would sit still. The urge to draw stuck with me until I grew older -- I was the resident doodler in grade school and high school. My best friend and I would make these little comics. I had a friend who I shared a drawing notebook with.

Eventually, my classmates and friends predicted that I would be an artist. If not, I would be an interior designer, or maybe an architect. No one, not even myself, correctly thought that I would actually end up becoming a scientist (well, maybe my high school physics teacher, but he swore he was just jesting).

Suddenly, how frequent I drew became sparse. Until I can only draw once in a blue moon. Until I would be really happy I'd end up finishing a drawing at all. Before I could even improve myself, I was pulled into a whole new world, and I needed 100% of my focus in there.

So I'm glad

That the past few weeks, I can actually finish drawings again. I had this really bad habit of starting a drawing, but never finishing them. I had a lot to thank for giving me inspiration and prompts -- the books I read, keshi (stan keshi!), anime I watch, Hive... and, well, the exciting albeit tedious tasks I do for my job.

The Drawing with Note 10+ Series

I mean, look at that! I actually drew that much (and more!) in under three weeks. That much is literally much more than the number of drawings I did last year.

I think I also have to really thank my big sister for pulling me back into the realm of Hive. LMAO. I can't remember why I ended up coming back, or how Hive had entered our conversation. But I remember how she had to call me from across the world just to teach me the ropes around the community...

...again.

The new drawing

Word vomit ends there, kinda. I just did a new drawing.

The inspiration comes from Aimer's song, 蝶々結び (Chouchou Musubi), literally "butterfly tie." The song tackles relationships in life -- tying and untying the knots. How we intend to tighten the knot, but it end up unfastening, or how we intend to tie the knot loosely, but it tightens nevertheless.

I loved listening to this song!

This is a digital painting of this portrait. She definitely didn't look like the way I was hoping she would, though. But still, I ended up really liking her.

Colors

In terms of color, I focused more again in limited hue -- adjusting only saturation and color levels depending on what I needed. This time, I mainly used the hue between 195 and 205 degrees (blue). Of course, this isn't to say I didn't use any other hues. I actually did, it was just that I wanted to focus more on a low temperature look, without me having to adjust using Photoshop or Snapseed.

Progress shots

I didn't record the whole drawing process to create a timelapse. I recorded only the sketching part, and will be showing it here as GIF. I had a particular difficulty sketching it (maybe because I drew it straight, no baselines whatsoever).

Like my last two drawings, I only used one brush this time -- but instead of the pencil brush, I used the watercolor brush. That should explain why it looked kind of pillow-y. Oh, I did use smudge brush, but limited only.

I personally loved how the pink against the blue turned out. That was also applied with the watercolor brush, but at a lower opacity.

TL;DR

LMAO. If you made it here and actually read the word vomit above, thank you! xD I can seriously get talkative when I wanted to, something my friends tease me about.

Device: Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
Apps:
- MediBang Paint for Android
- Adobe Photoshop CS6
Brushes: watercolor (40%); smudge (80%)

About Chouchou Musubi

The song was written and composed (I think) by RADWIMPS' frontman, Yojiro Noda.