This is just a background I painted recently for Kana’s next Japanese foods loop animation. She made already two of these loops that are really popular on YouTube so I wanted to do my best for the next one! This time we based the location on one of our favorite restaurants in Enoshima (a small island near Tokyo) for its rustic resort atmosphere. You can see me explaining the whole process in the video below:

Here is how the BG looks in Kana’s finished animated loop:

And her loop videos in a playlist here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_RAmeZavkY&list=PLRsbslBIqAYl255yHYATjTu2fkQxdJqX0

Subscribe to her channel if you like them!

This background was painted in Procreate on my iPad PRO during three live stream sessions that you can rewatch here:

Part 1 https://youtu.be/IcP6jRHuhrU Part 2 https://youtu.be/TKMcd4rOSAY Part 3 https://youtu.be/OOK7Hb6L5SQ

Tools:

I went recently with Kana to the close to our new studio museum of old Tokyo -  Fukagawa Edo Museum. This is a fascinating place for us because it contains a recreation of a few small old Tokyo (Edo) streets with some buildings you can actually explore inside. 

I like to go there for the architecture and because I can stroll around and sketch even on rainy days (the exhibition is all inside a huge hall). Kana likes to go inside the buildings to learn about all the people that lived there (the exhibition is quite realistic and detailed).

On our last visit, while Kana was looking around, checking out some stuff for her Edo book, I sat down on one of the benches and started to do some sketches of a street corner. 

The lighting in the museum is constantly changing because it’s supposed to simulate a whole day in Edo in just about an hour, so I focused mostly on the lines and only decided to add the colors back at home. 

The paper I used here is not well suited for watercolors, so I tried my best not to overdo the painting.

Tools:

MD Paper cotton sketchbook

0.7 B mechanical pencil (sketch)

Fountain pen with grey waterproof ink (lines)

“Tokyo at Night” is DONE!

A series of ten watercolor illustrations portraying night Tokyo streets that I started painting in 2017. Painting in between other projects and commissions it took me more than a year to finish this project.

Instead of going for the obvious - cool looking, new built high rise offices I wanted to depict the night scenes of Tokyo that are not so widely seen - back streets, empty alleys, tall buildings and empty parking lots. Mostly brightly lit (even the sky is never just black) with no people, those places have a weird eerie atmosphere that I wanted to recreate.

We walk a lot with Kana - especially in the late evenings when it’s cooler and we finished the day’s work. I took a lot of reference photos of interesting night scenes when we were still living in Tokyo’s Waseda and used them to make this series of paintings.

This series follows a path from Kudanshita to Waseda through Kagurazaka.

And here are all the spots on a Google Map if you want to go and explore by yourself: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1WLufcU6-TNeHqBwDDC9_m1npAIMkdlGi&usp=sharing

This series is accompanied by making-of videos available on my YouTube channel (HERE) showing the painting process and the tools I used.

Technical details: * Paper: HOLBEIN Waterford natural 300g/m cotton paper * Sketch: Mitsu-bishi Hi-Uni pencil grade HB * Line: COPIC Multiliner SP 0.5mm * Colors: my main Schmincke set (see the tools section)

Additionally, I used the airbrush in some of the later pieces to get some additional depth and shadows. I’m showing more about this technique in the making-of videos.