Fall In My Arms Now (Matt x Mello)

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The title of the picture is taken from the lyrics of the song Check Yes Juliet by We the Kings. I finished the Death Note manga series and, although I knew it was coming, the ending depressed me. I had to channel my emotions into another art piece and I couldn't resist drawing another picture of these two. I was having indefinite trouble trying to find references for the poses I had in mind. It was at this point that I started my habit of taking photographs of myself or someone else in the pose and clothing of what I wanted to draw. I posed as both people separately in my room, Photoshopped the two pictures together, and finally drew the sketch. I later dressed up in the clothes they were wearing and took a couple more photos to use as clothing reference. I finally found time to color a picture in Photoshop. The summer was young and I had nothing else to do. Instead of coloring the way I usually did before, I went with a manga-style coloring. I would have originally used my Manga Studio program, but I could not get the program working on my computer, so I defaulted to Photoshop. Unfortunately, I deleted the reference photos I took so I cannot post those up. Total, this piece took about eighteen hours roughly and is also the piece responsible for causing me to start a blog in the first place. I had not created something so well in such a long time and I wanted to share it somewhere beyond Gaia and my circle of friends.
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I did not re-size the image before I started coloring, so when I finally did re-size it, it ended up with a grid texture. I tried to use it to my advantage by making it look like screen tone, but it still makes the quality look poor. I had a lot of trouble with the perspective at first. I still think Mello looks uncomfortable in the position I drew him in. He does not look like he's leaning back into Matt, so that could be the problem. I'm pleased with the leather clothing he is wearing. I did not have anything close to that fabric, so I had to improvise and it turned out quite well, although I got a little lazy on his pants. The arm he has behind Matt's head looks awkward. I don't think I foreshortened it correctly. Matt, on the other hand, turned out wonderfully. I like his goggles, and I'm absolutely tickled with how great his hands turned out. I got lazy on the controller though. The simplicity of the coloring was a nice break for me. I did not have to worry about blending and choosing the ride shades of color. I had trouble with the background. I was going to draw a couch or a bed behind them, but I could not make that work for me. I decided to just throw a texture behind them (my boyfriend scolded me that I need to practice drawing backgrounds). I rummaged through the brush sets I had downloaded and settled on the hazy texture I ended up using. I absolutely adore how this turned out when all was finished.
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Drawn June 25, '08.
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Mechanical pencil and Photoshop 7.
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Picture (C) Alice Falling; Characters (C) Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata