Draken Glass Painting!

The next glass painting is done! This time around, my subject of inspiration was Draken from Tokyo Revengers, which is an anime that premiered a little bit ago and I kind of fell in love with it…! Draken is my favorite character, so naturally I had to dedicate some art to him.

I painted this on World Mental Health Day (10/10/21), and in honor of Depression Education and Awareness Month, I want to share what painting does for me. As I mentioned in my last painting post, I’m going through a rough time, and that rough time got worse in the last week. The short story is on top of everything else going on, I was enduring physical pain with a concerning health issue all last week, and I went to the ER on Friday afternoon and spent nearly eight hours there. Admittedly, I’m quite distraught with life right now, so painting has allowed me to escape the world for a few hours in creating something from nothing. It tames my intense emotions and lets them rest for a good chunk of time. I don’t claim to be a talented artist, but what I appreciate about art is how much it gets you to focus and pay attention to details. Before you know it, as you put Demon Slayer on in the background to rewatch it before the next season comes out, four hours go by! All of this to say that painting, and art, has helped me find a place of solace amidst life’s turbulence, and I am grateful it’s helped me in my struggles.

Now that we’ve gotten all the serious stuff out of the way… I’d say the Draken painting is an improvement from the Gojo one. Namely in the fact that I finally saw the errors in my ways of trying to paint clean black lines as the outline. I took a glorious trip to Michael’s and bought a Sharpie oil-based marker, and it worked like a charm – thank you, random TikTok tutorial that came across my “for you page!” (By the way, going to Michael’s will be both a gift and curse because I forgot how much of an art and craft person’s paradise it is, and I will be spending much more time there buying things that I probably don’t need. Stay tuned on that!)

So, outline lines improved – yay! The challenge this time around, and why I subconsciously forgot to take photos of it, was mixing colors. Usually I’m pretty on point about this, but for some reason, it was a struggle to mix the shadow colors. I noticed that I didn’t use enough white to make it lighter and cohesive across the image, but it didn’t turn out half bad! Layering the colors this time around worked out better after having done the first one. I prioritized what colors needed to be mixed in order so I wasn’t constantly rinsing out my palette. What I need to finesse next is making sure I paint all the way to the outline lines, because there were definitely some small holes without paint!

Again, not claiming to be an artist, but I love that this is a healthy outlet for me. It’s a way to forget, even for a moment, all the hard shit I’m dealing with and be with myself to create something awesome. And now that I’ve rediscovered Michael’s, you best believe there are more paintings coming! Where am I going to put them all?!

xo
Siri