In the meantime, I promised last time I posted here that I would show off something kind of unusual for me. This week, I have this picture of the Pokemon Azumarill (because it was still Pokemon Profile Picture Month when I drew it) which is meant to look like it was drawn with crayons. I used this drawing as my profile picture for the rest of December after I stopped using the Mega Lucario drawing from last time.
Azumarill was originally introduced in Pokemon Gold and Silver as a Water Pokemon, and she is the evolved form of one of the Pokemon revealed before Gold and Silver were sold: Marill. While she was not a good Pokemon in her first appearance, later generations granted Azumarill many buffs. When Abilities were introduced, one of Azumarill's possible abilities was "Huge Power", which doubles her Attack stat (no questions asked). She later acquired Aqua Jet, one of the many "priority attacks" (a move which lets the user make her move before her opponent) in the series. Aqua Jet's speed comes at the price of being a relatively weak move, but Azumarill's hefty Huge Power-boosted Attack stat emphasizes the impact Aqua Jet can carve. In the X and Y games, however, Azumarill has recently become exceptionally popular partially due to her being one of several older Pokemon to gain the Fairy type, a new type introduced in X and Y. As a Water-Fairy Pokemon, this adorable aqua rabbit lords formidable offensive presence over competitive play, to the point where Azumarill is currently the most used and most feared Fairy-type Pokemon (aside from maybe the legendary Xerneas, who is usually banned).
To celebrate the release of Pokemon X and Y, I knew I wanted to draw at least one Mega Evolution (accomplished with Lucario) and one Fairy Pokemon. I have been itching to draw Flabebe and her evolved forms (pretty much the Fairy equivalent of Machop to Fighting Pokemon or Abra to Psychic Pokemon), but I chose Azumarill mainly because I had raised one myself, and I thought she could look cute. However, I wanted to try something a bit different. Fairies are kind of thought as cute, thanks largely to Tinkerbell, so how could I make this simple idea look "cute"?
Before I started drawing in Photoshop, before I realized colored pencils were both smooth and easy to use as coloring utensils, I (and many other kids) used crayons to color when I was young. Crayons were provided more often than even markers by the schools, and Crayola was a big name as a child. Crayons seemed like a childish way to color a picture. A "cute" way. Well, now is as good a time as any to learn how to make a Photoshop picture look like a crayon drawing.
Until this picture, I had not created a new brush in Photoshop before, and my usual hard round brushes would probably look too clean to resemble a crayon drawing. I searched the Internet for advice on making a "crayon Photoshop" and eventually read a couple of tutorials on how to make the crayon brush. Setting your brush to scatter helps this effect quite a bit. The brush I eventually wound up with reminds me a bit of the airbrush tool in Microsoft's Paint programs, which I used a lot making the sprites for Paint Boy. Whether this was a wise choice or not might depend on the viewer's perspective.
I do not have much more to say beyond that. While I did want to experiment with a crayon drawing in Photoshop, I also used this picture mainly as a breather from my usual style. Looking at a version I printed later, it does look a bit sloppy in places, and the water drops are not well-defined. Still, it was nice to try something new and simple, and I managed to draw a Pokemon in the meantime. Now I have some crayon brushes I can use in Photoshop, which may come in handy for backgrounds later. Maybe I can even try some more (better) drawings in this style in the future.
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