U̶m̶b̶r̶a̶,̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶-̶b̶r̶a̶,̶ ̶h̶u̶e̶h̶u̶e̶.̶



(I'm sorry.)

Wait, what? I thought I was busy doing college work! How did I find the time for one of my fully-shaded Photoshop funfest drawings??The answer is, I didn't. Look a little more closely. This picture served as a test to see if I could work in a rougher style, and it turns out I can! This started with me marvelling at Umbreon's design (because seriously, it's utterly fantastic), and thinking it would really work well as an anthro. I also wanted to do a tasteful artistic nude (partially to make up for the shameless Scizor butt ), so those ideas slotted neatly together. At first, I imagined it would turn out like the aforementioned Scizor butt and Anthro Mega Absol Sketch : a quick job; sketchy; with some simple colour. But then I thought "You know what, no! Why should I settle for that? I'm going to make this as good as I can!" So I drew the sketch over a longer period of time than usual, looking up countless reference images and painstakingly tweaking the anatomy until I couldn't possibly make it any better. But the idea of doing a full-on drawing with my trademark perfectionism manifest in the lines and shading really didn't sit right with me after that speed-draw video I did for my college project, where I spent about 9 hours (and another 1 or 2 on some grey fill and finishing touches) drawing the same fluffy dragon three times over. It killed my hand, and was quite tiresome. Also, I simply didn't have time for a big ol' drawing! And for some reason, it didn't feel right for this picture, so...I decided I'd still make a finished, coloured, shaded pic, but do it in a rougher style just to see if I could, and because it would probably take less time. I wanted to have rougher lineart than usual, but wasn't sure how. I liked the look that RubberRoss uses on Doodle Doods (a new show on the Game Grumps channel) for his lines, and presumed that he was using a custom brush. I tried looking for rough brushes, but they were all paint-textured except for this one pack that I downloaded that turned out to be rubbish. But then I came up with a childishly simple solution! All I had to do was turn up the size jitter of the normal brush up from 0% to about 40%, and it produced a look eerily reminiscent of the pen lines I used to get back in 2013, before I did my lines digitally. The lines for Stripes [with Speedpaint!] took about 2 hours (including the wings which I ultimately scrapped), but the lines for this? A mere 10-20 minutes! Because it was literally impossible to spend hours and hours obsessing over making the lines as smooth as possible, I didn't bother, and this was the result.Now for the colours. A short while back, I discovered a new tool in Photoshop: the Mixer Brush. It basically blends colours together. I decided to try that out one day instead of my quite cumbersome system for shading (which you can see in the speedpaint video for Stripes). I thought this would be a good opportunity to try the Mixer Brush, and I'm rather pleased with the results. And again, it was much much faster. I really like the kind of paintlike look it produced. Oh, and the icing on the cake? This rough line technique is actually really useful for my college project! Seeing this pic on my blog (to show where I got the technique from, very important for extra credit) should make the examiner's day more... uh, interesting.The sketch for this probably took around 2 hours or a bit less (since I took so long making the anatomy as good as I possibly could), while the rest - lines, colours, shading, background - took around 3 hours. That's a total of probably slightly under 5 hours. You know what other picture I did recently which took 5 hours?Observe how it has no shading whatsoever. That one also has a speedpaint video, where you can see me obsessing over the lines as usual. But with this Umbreon, I intentionally stepped out of my comfort zone and the results were not only achieved faster, but they turned out WAY better than I expected! Seriously, I'm really pleased with how this turned out. I didn't expect it to be actually GOOD!! (I really hope people like this.) So what started as another sketchy Pokemon anthro (but with more thoroughly-referenced anatomy) ended up as a bold new step into a much faster (but still as good-looking) technique for me. And I think it actually may have more character than my more polished, considered style.Here's the sketch. A little behind-the-scenes info: Umbreon was originally intended to be facing left, but when the sketch was pretty much finished and I was mirroring the image to check that it looked okay, I decided she actually worked better facing the other way.Stay tuned~