Red/Cyan color illusion

 

For the experiment I used a really old artwork of Emily and Herrington that I like. Emily is the one with red hair. 

There is NO red in this image. If you zoom in on Emily's hair you will find it's actually a blue-gray.

I quite like this color filter as well. The reds are very vibrant. Enhancing the red improves the color illusion, which you can see below.

 

Colorecipe. The cyan/red color illusion is achieved by a 50% opacity overlay. 

Fireworks

 *Bumpity-boo voice* HAPPy FOURth of JuLYYY!!!

Acrylic markers on paper. Then, I scanned it in and inverted the colors of the entire image. It's a fun party trick.

Blue Moon

Started drawing over a messy old sketch from 10+ years ago. It just needed a few touch-ups to bring it ot life.

Queen Carmen

 Another image edit from 2010. I thought she was quite cute and deserved better treatment.

Baby

 Touched up an old drawing from 2010. Sometimes all it takes is a few minor tweaks.

Walter Sullivan Gets A Glow-Up

Drawn in 2009

Sometimes I like to go over old artworks and see if I can make them better. I like this picture of Walter other than the fact that it doesn't really look like him?

Lookin good, gurl. 

Skull dancer, touched up

 

This skull dancer girl is one of my all time personal favorite artworks. I love how she came out and I cherish the memories so fondly too!

High flying Marisa, touched up

Touched up an old personal favorite. I always liked the colors of the original, but wanted to enhance it with a few extra details. The old version is from 2012.

Girl and ribbon, touched up

I love doing these picture edits. The original artwork is from 2012.

One lesson I learned from this one is to stay as close to the original as possible. I'm not happy with how much this one ended up straying away. Oh well.

Statue - touched up

I haven't had much free time to draw lately, but in the meantime I've gotten carried away with touching up old artworks. I wanted to see if I could fix an artwork I dislike, and so far, I am super happy with the results! This artwork is originally from 2014, AKA the dark ages. A lot of what I did back then is, uh, not good.

The other reason for touching up older artworks is because there are some things I miss. The goal is to bring back elements of my old style with the new. I will use these edits as a reference for future artworks. 

In the original Deviantart description I wrote that this artwork was a slog to work on and I wasn't that interested, taking months to finish. One thing I recently discovered is how to make art fun again. I have always followed a carefully laid-out methodology for digital art with dozens of layers and folders. I still follow this, but that's only half of the process. 

The fun part starts when I flatten the image and start drawing over it, adding details that would be tedious if I had to sift through 50 different layers. Layers can be helpful but also a detriment. I love going over the drawing and emphasizing lines, details, and colors, just as if I was coloring something on paper or canvas.

Daisy

 

I wanted to see if I could take an artwork I dislike, and turn it into something I do like. Worst part is, this was for an art trade. I wish I could go back in time and grab 2014 Mel by the shoulders and ask them what they were thinking. Wish I had a mentor back then. But alas!

Emily - Touched up

Emily, touched up

Original from 2012

I re-colored this lineart recently, but to be honest, I was not happy with it. This time, I went directly over the original artwork and touched it up. The goal is to keep editing to a minimum, while enhancing certain details. Out of all my attempts, this is my new favorite version.

Divine Light - Touched up

Original from 2013

I haven't had much time or energy to start anything new, sadly. But in the meantime I decided to touch up one of my personal favorite artworks. This is from a whole ten years ago!!

Many of my personal favorite artworks were done between 2012 and 2013, including this one. I really enjoyed revisiting the artwork, fixing mistakes and enhancing certain details. Editing old artworks helps me remember how want my art to look.

Color swatch

 

I photographed my computer screen through a prism. Then I painted over it.

Accidental Seurat

 

 I was experimenting with filters in Procreate using some old artworks and accidentally discovered this Georges Seurat effect. It was achieved by applying colored noise to the image and then setting it to Divide. There might have been some other steps too but this is what I mostly remember.

Photo edit: reduced colors

 

I'm experimenting with color reduction to make the pictures easier to copy from when I do my studies. This was limited to 6-10 colors- but with dithering, it maintains most of its detail. My favorite thing about this is that objects in the light have more definition, while areas with less exposure to light tend to smear together.

Secret Valentine 2013 - touched up

Secret Valentine gift for Kumashige on Deviantart. I still really love how this one came out. All it needed was a few small touchups to really make the characters pop. 

One random memory I have of working on this is adding some final touches when my computer crashed. All sorts of funky colors and buzzing noises. I still have no idea what that was about, but it never happened again.