Purple Heart

pixiv link: www.pixiv.net/member_illust.ph…
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There's the joke: I'm actually posting something.

So this is my first finished drawing in 2017... and it's April. I guess this winter ended up not being very productive, lol (well, at least art-wise)
But frankly, this was probably overdue because it's been 9 months of drawing without stopping for any significant amount of time (a record for me, previous was... 4 months). I'm surprised I even lasted that long. December was just a "last burst" of sorts I guess.

I hoped I could do without another long break this time but I guess it's necessary after all - over those 9 months, I accumulated a lot of "clutter" in my head - I learned new things when I didn't quite have the time to solidify whatever I learned before that. Basically, with every drawing, I got more questions than answers to questions I already had, so I felt like I have no idea what I'm doing and it was very confusing. Plus, over the last year, my drawing process gradually transformed from mostly strict rule-based into mostly intuition/perception-based, so it seemed like I've been losing control over it, which made me even more confused.
I did take a week-long break, but it didn't really help. 2+ months seem to work though - I feel like I'm starting from zero again (even though this "zero" is much higher than the actual "zero") and drawing feels a lot more natural and far less confusing. And thanks to fresh perspective, I see my drawings very differently now, which helped resolve some of the problems I had before.
So yeah, sometimes it's just best to press the reset button.

Well, anyway, this drawing is that 3rd attempt after 2 failures, third time IS the charm after all (even if it's, ahem, finished three months later). I initially considered making multiple versions (like with Nepgear) but by now, well, it took long enough to finish as it is (besides, in this case it would've been much more time-consuming).
The lighting here was really difficult and it's probably the hardest lighting scheme I've ever done, but I certainly learned a whole lot (at least enough to know that I did it wrong...) The pose isn't the easiest either (easier than the ones I tried in failed attempts though). Oh, and the braids. It's been a very long time since I last drew them and ouch, braids in perspective are hell.
I also realized that I don't have to use A4 format for everything (what a discovery!). I used to be more liberal with image dimensions but then A4 sort of stuck and I forgot that I could use anything else, oops.