Isabella I of Castile

Watch on DA | S6

I totally forgot that I had to write this entry! I hope I haven't forgotten anything about the process xDDD...

This time is the turn of Isabella I of Castile (Isabel I de Castilla) was the Queen of Castile and Leon and Queen consort of Aragón, Majorca, Naples and Valencia. She was married to Ferdinand II of Aragon, and they were known as the Catholic Monarchs. Both of them reconquered Granada, the last Muslim kingdom, and supported and financed Christopher Columbus' voyage.

I had several troubles looking for pictures about her, since in ones you could see her hair blonde and in others it was brown, plus there is also a TV show about her life, and the actress (Michelle Jenner) has a very light broen hair colour. In the end I decided to pick a very light brown, almost blonde, and then I added some shades using red tones.

I also couldn't decide the colour of her clothes, since none seemed good to me. I ended up choosing this one by popular demand xD. Here you can see the others:

 

 

For the frame I used this artwork by Alphonse Mucha as a reference, since I liked it and I thought it would fit it quite well. As for some of the details, I used this shape pack by CherubiumAngles, since my Photoshop started to act weird xD.

Jeanne D'Arc

Watch on DA | S6

Here's the second piece of my historic women series.

This time, I've drawn Jeanne D'Arc or Joan of Arc (1410-1431), who received visions of various saints and angels telling her to support her king Charles VII and recovering France from English domination. She was captured in 1430 by the english and condemned to die burned at the stake.

Since she is considered both as a Saint and a Virgin, I didn't wanted to draw her in a sexy style (even though I'm not very keen on religions). Instead, I decided to draw her with a melancholic face, holding her coat of arms in a spear. Since the background is more simplistic than Marie Antoinette's, I decided to give it some details by adding a fleur de lis pattern to her dress.

while I was searching for references for her armor, I realised that se really had dark hair, which contradicts what we are used to see on TV series, cinema and cartoons where they depict her as a blonde, so I decided to stay loyal to her real self. For the armor I used several references from portraits and statues and then added some extra golden details.

Before finishing, I want to let you know that I've openen an store on Socity6, so from now on you will be able to purchase some of my works as prints, bags, iPhone cases and a wide amount of items more! I've already added the link to the right column, and thete is also a little widget on the left one, but  I'll leave the link to it here anyway ^^.

TO MY S6 STORE

Marie Antoinette

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Lately I've been thinking about making a series of drawing dedicated to some historic women, using some armors and weapons of their times, made in a sexy/nouveau style.

The first woman I decided to portray was Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), who was the Queen consort of France until the Revolutionary Tribunal executed her by guillotine on 16 October 1793.

Drawing her was quite a challenge. At first I had planned to draw her using a different dress, but pretty similar to this one. When I found this painting by Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller I decided it was better to draw an interpretation of the dress that she's wearing on it.

The next thing I needed to know, was the kind of armor which was used on that century...I finally found a website about the 18th century, and I found a picture of the Cuirassier armor, and decided that it was the perfect armor for this dress. Unfortunatelly, the pictures I found about it were pretty small, that's why I've maybe missed some details. I also changed the belt for a ribbon.

The painting process was a bit painful with all that folds, ruffles, jewels and metallic elements, but I think it came out pretty nice. One curious thing is that before I painted her hair, it looked like Hades' hair xDDD.

Since I want this series to have a Nouveau frame, I had to search for some references. I found one that I liked and I made my own interpretation of it. It may be a bit simplistic, but I like how it looks.

I think the next one of this series will be Jeanne D'Arc.

Oiran

Watch on DA | Pixiv

Some weeks ago my friend Laura asked me if I wanted to order some art supplies with her, I finally did and I ordered a Prismacolor Blue 2H pencil and a pack of Sakura Pigma Micron fineliners. I got them yertserday, so I decided to give them a try.

At first I wasn't very happy with the pencil, I mean, I can see the blue better than the grey but it's more difficult to erase it although it's an special pencil for sketching but, anyway, it seems that the watercolors covered it pretty well. On the other hand, I'm very happy with the fineliners because they are water-resistant and they have a pretty dark color but, you need to be careful when you pass your eraser over it, because it'll eat the blacks!

About the drawing, I wantd to draw Chizuru Yukimura (from Hakuouki ~Shinsengumi Kitan~) on her Oiran (NOT GEISHA) outfit for a long time, so I though this would be the perfect opportunity. At first I thought I was going to die with all the details of her kimono, but I decided not to overload it with all the details and I ended up doing just the patterns on the red part of it.

I wanted to do it in a Art Nouveau style, since I love it A LOT, so I searched for some frame refferences until I got this. I must say that I'm pretty proud of it, since I had to remove the dust from my compass tool, which I hadn't used for years!

The piece was painted using water colors and some metallic pencils and markers for the details.

Of course, I had to edit the colors A LOT to make them look better once I scanned it, here's a comparisson between the unedited piece and the edited one (you must know that scanners ALWAYS kills the colors! so a bit of edditing is always reccomended). At the end I decied to add some japanese patterns to the background.