lazytaw

I really liked the uneven pupils I gave him, I think it brings attention to his eyes and his eyes are very evident to me because of jon matteson's big hauntingly blue eyes, so I wanted to bring attention to them somehow. I like how his teeth turned out as well 🙏🙏 I tried to make his neck longer to make him unatural but I don't think it worked very well, his sloped shoulders should contribute with the longness of his neck as well but idk it really just looks like an artstyle instead of a design choice

I just saw some of those illustrated martial arts guide sheets that show you the sequence of forms and movements. So I wanted to draw the turtles as if they were in one of those guides, I thought it would be fun to draw the turtles ninja-ing. I don't think I ever saw it done before, so why not do it myself. you can understand the movements a little better by reading the alt text of the first image, idk if I was able to describe it very well, but I think it's all there.

Thinking about it now some Splinters (the ones that weren't already a ninja master), probably learned martial arts from one of those book guides, so there is that too.

Intend to draw the other turtles as well. I already have some ideas. It might help me with my dynamic drawing, too. This one do look a little stiff 💔 I did the shortest one in the list for Leo, and what took me the longest was his knee brace (I regret nothing).

Okay time for A little Self-indulgent Yap Now:

As I drew this for my own enjoyment, I just had to give him a Hinged Knee Brace, I love my Leos with knee braces. I saw some arts of him with this type of knee brace before and I really loved it so I made it canon in my own head too. Donnie researched and custom made this one for him to keep his knee stabilized and stop it from failing or bending the wrong way as in my headcannon Leo sustained a parcial unhappy triad, so this type of knee brace should help him back up to train and fight, without worrying about making things worse.

He also has a lighter padded knee brace that he wears when they aren't training or on a mission, it's less bulky but don't hold his knee in place as firmly as the hinged one so he just wears it around the lair, when he is not doing any extenuating activities. It wouldn't be good for him to use the hinged one the whole time because it could cause muscle atrophy, and weakening his leg muscles would be really bad for him as a swordsman. Leo really doesn't like wearing none of it or doing the physiotherapy exercises, but he needs to do it if he doesn't want Raph or Donnie to like break his other knee.

Zoom in for the details because tumblr ate half the pixels.

also Leo and Mikey have like the same eyecolor in these for some reason

More of my thoughts on this: I really like that the 2012 turtles have those more almond shaped eyes. I think the one who inspired me the most to actually draw it was Donnie who has like those kind of eye bags, that I really liked and though it would be nice to draw. Plus, you can't really see their eyelids when they have their masks on, so thinking about the looks we had in the series I just tried to imagine the different eyeshapes they could have.

Leo looks like he has monolids, while donnie has double eyelids, and both have some little eyebags. While mikey is just round all around. And I just freestyled raph as we didn't have a closer look into his maskless face, so I decided to make it similar to mikey's, but sharper and with a marked epicanthal fold.