I am not an artist (like Prince Janus – go look at his post. I can wait til you come back).
You're back? Good. Where were we? Oh, yeah, not an artist... I cannot stress this enough. I wish I could draw, paint, sculpt, pretty much any sort of visual art, but no. I have zero skill in this area.
I very much appreciate visual arts, however. This can be attested to by my anime cel collection, most of which can be viewed here:
http://foreverdreaming.rubberslug.comThere's a thrill when you hold in your hands one of the many pieces of art that flashed so quickly in front of a camera to produce an anime you like. This was an expensive hobby that I can't maintain, which is probably for the best as most anime are produced via electronic means now, so hand-painted acetate cels are a thing of the past.
To clarify – all of the images in my cel gallery (minus the two fan cel sections and the 'Crystal's Art' section) are actual professional, production cels or precursor sketches used to create various anime shows I like. I did not paint them. I bought them over time from reputable cel dealers.
But, as I fell in love with this art form, I had to give it a try myself. What I paint are FAN cels. They are not intended to be confused at all with PRODUCTION cels, which are the 'real' ones collectors prize. The cool thing with fan cels though, is one isn't confined to what is available in production cels. So much animation is now produced either mostly or entirely through virtual means that there are no productions cels, and sometimes, not even production sketches (sniffle!)
It's been more than five years since I last attempted to paint a fan cel, but there's an image that won't stop haunting me, so, I dug my supplies out from storage, and made a solid start yesterday.
Here's the image:
My process is to print it the size I want to paint in full color:
Then flip it and print it again (as the image is painted on the back side of the acetate – so reversed):
(I use both of these full color images as references during the painting stage.)
Then I reduce the color and increase the contrast so I can delineate the lines I want to use before printing it. Then I go over those base lines with a pencil to clarify which ones I want to use and get the feel of how they flow:
Then, tape that image and a clear piece of acetate on a sturdy piece of clear plastic and draw them on using a pigment pen. Back in the day some cel artists used India Ink and dip pens, but the one time I tried that it was an unmitigated disaster! So this image is of the acetate, fully lined, on my lightbox.
The lines are a bit wobbly, but I am going to go with it. It's been at least six years since I last tried to paint a fan cel. It's going to take a while to retrain how to draw on acetate (it's so slick!) but I am sure it's going to take a while to relearn how to paint on acetate, too. So, this entire fan cel will be a practice run.
Now, it is a test of patience, but I have to let the pigment dry for several days, or it will smear and feather under the paint. I can keep this page updated if anyone is interested in the progress.
