Artistic Etudes 1: Lightning

Target: Pichu
Medium: Colored Pencils
[On DeviantArt]

 

C l a i m e d.

 

First Impression.
Like the lightning you’re studying, this piece radiates power. The dark, near-black blue of the background makes the lightning bolts and the Pichu creating them really pop, and this contrast, combined with the vertical composition and Pichu’s expression, really shows off strength. So without further ado, let’s delve into the strengths of this piece, and ways in which it could have been stronger!

Form.
Right away my eye is drawn to Pichu, so let’s start there! You’ve got Pichu in a straight-on angle, with its face scrunched up and its little hands clutched to its body. These are immediate cues that Pichu is in a state of concentration, exerting itself to call forth the lightning that fills the rest of the piece. You’ve done a really good job representing Pichu here, representing its features faithfully. I don’t see the little stripe of black on Pichu’s neck/chest, but with Pichu’s hunched posture its head would appear to be covering up that marking. I thought it was odd that the feet didn’t have any sort of pads, but that was my bad - I looked up ‘pichu feet’ and found that the little rodent’s feet are entirely blank of any sort of pads are markings. Nice detail! It seems like a silly thing, but since you’re sticking close to the official art, it shows solid attention to and respect for your source material. There is a different issue with the feet, though. In the art, Pichu’s feet are clearly split into three toes. This is a bit of a nitpick to be sure, but Pichu’s feet look blobby and odd right now rather than the oversized rodent feet it normally has. Just a few lines would suffice here to show Pichu’s feet properly and clear up the confusion that the lack of toes can cause for a viewer. Furthermore, the placement of Pichu’s tail is a bit odd. While a Pichu with a typical standing posture would have its tail hanging out just a little bit above its hip, the tail should move along with the rest of the body. Pichu is curling its body, its hips and head curled forward, and its tail placement should reflect that.

See how the Pichus' tails go under their bodies as they wiggle? Right now, your Pichu’s tail is held high, making it look out-of-place. Moving it below Pichu’s body so that it properly appears at the Pokemon’s rump would fix this quite handily.

Now, onto the second element of your piece - the lightning! I know from experience that lightning is wicked hard to draw, so I give you props for the effort you’ve put in. For the most part, it looks good. In your drawing, the lightning flashes all around. In addition to filling up negative space and drawing the eye, the many forks coming off of the main ‘branches’ of your lightning make the bolts of electricity look more realistic. However, there’s some more subtle touches to real-world lightning that I believe you could benefit from. One major thing to keep in mind about lightning is that it rarely follows any sort of proper geometric pattern for a long while - that is, it rarely follows a specific curve or line for much of its length.

Check out this bolt - see how jagged it is and how abruptly it switches to and from an arc and a straight line? Your lightning is nearly all curves, much of them uniform, with only a few jagged edges. This contrast of sharp angles and curves makes lightning look really powerful, and I believe you could give your lightning a lot more juice by giving it strange, jagged arcs and wobbly, sharply-angled lines. Like I said, lightning is tricky as all get-out. You gave it a good go here, so now all your work needs is a little more wildness to make it look extra electric.

Shading and Color.
As with your Shellos piece, the colors are what really draw me in, here. The intense contrast between your not-quite-black background, the way Pichu really pops out with its bright yellow colors, and the intricate lightning and shadows at play are just awesome to look at. You, sir, are a powerful colorist.

Being an avid drawer of glowy things, I recognize a lot of your tricks. Good tricks! You’ve rendered the lightning white on top of a blue glow, which creates an awesomely intense glowing effect. With the white on top and the pale blue behind, the lightning looks like the brightest and most luminous thing in the environment. The glow on the ‘main’ bolt of lightning also has a bit more green in it than the background does - it’s a warmer blue, which contrasts with both the background and the other crackles of electricity, which are surrounded by a somewhat cooler blue. This has a couple of effects. The first is that it makes your main bolt stand out a lot more than the rest, showcasing it as a focal point of your piece. Furthermore, the slightly greener glow and the yellow you’ve threaded through the main bolt maintain color unity, so that Pichu isn’t the only yellow thing in the picture. Really good job here. My only advice would be to keep the yellow in the middle of the lightning bolt, and possibly lighten it a bit. When it’s on the outside, it looks a bit like an outline, which is sorta visually confusing. Other than that, really swell job on this.

I could talk about glowing stuff all day so let’s go back to Pichu! You’ve done a pretty good job of its colors; however, I can’t help but notice that its colors more closely match the art for Pikachu than for Pichu. Pichu tends to have a lighter, less saturated coat with pale pink cheeks. I support tinkering with designs if it’s in service to the work itself, so I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, the red cheeks and midtone yellow add intensity without distracting from the lightning’s brightness; on the other hand, I feel like a less saturated yellow would help Pichu fit in better with the piece as well as not going completely off-model with the colors. I would also like to see some highlights on Pichu. It’s surrounded by super-bright lightning bolts that light up the night sky; these bolts would no doubt light up Pichu as well. You’ve done a really good job showing lighting with shadow, introducing deep shadows where the lightning isn’t shining. However, intense shading goes hand-in-hand with intense lighting. Either deepening shadows or introducing stark highlights would really sell the fact that Pichu is surrounded by bright lightning. It would also help with visual clarity. Because Pichu’s ears and tail are so dark, they blend in a bit with the background. Introducing highlights would help prevent the ears and tail from getting lost.

Technique.
As usual, you handle your colored pencils like an absolute champ. All of the white areas look completely deliberate - which is especially impressive since there’s so dang many of them. You’ve shown a lot of control through the use of white in your lightning bolts and by surrounding them all with such a glow. Your blending is still super skillfull, though there’s a couple of places - namely, in the arcs of electricity on Pichu’s left and right - where you could have stood to use softer, more gradual gradients. The background also isn’t just one constant color, which I appreciate; there’s a bit of alternation between more and less dark blues, preventing the negative space from becoming one big ‘blah’ of monotony. Other than the side-lightning, I have no complaints or even nitpicks with your technique. Nicely done.

Conclusion.
Overall, this drawing is very good. There’s a lot of intensity here, with Pichu’s expression and body language creating a tension that’s unleashed powerfully in the arcs of electricity that surround it. It’s a really good crack at drawing lightning; there’s room for improvement, to be sure, but the great colors, powerful body language, and thoughtful use of contrast gives me the confidence to say Pichu captured. Nice job! Like I said with the Shellos piece, I would love to see you experiment a bit more boldly with shading. Also keep in mind how the creatures you draw move and shift with dynamic pieces like this, and how you can use certain kinds of shapes and lines to your advantage. For now, keep on killing it, and enjoy your mouse!