Will o’ The Force

Vaporeon

My first attempt at Pokémon art. I know nothing of the games or the anime, so this was an interesting challenge in trying to make those lines and edges as clean as possible.

The background design, done entirely with posca pens, was inspired by those “how to draw water” videos you see on TikTok.

Pikachu

Not my favourite. Pikachu is adorable, but not particularly challenging. This piece also presents a plethora of rookie mistakes that I’m not proud of, but I maintain that they’ve been helpful in developing a more consistent technique

Sylveon

She is my everything and I’ll love her for all eternity. An incredible challenge! Not only did I make so many mistakes that I had to fix, but consistently mixing all those different shades of pink that stood out from one another induced an entirely new level of rage for me.

This was when I really started leaning into the idea of really abstract background designs. My research showed Sylveon is a peaceful type Pokémon, who has attacks, but prefers to stay largely nonviolent, and I wanted this to show. I wanted to call to the movement of her body in the lines, and also really allow her to pop with the bubbles filling up those big empty spaces.

Umbreon

Screaming crying throwing up. So cute! But also a huge pain in my ass! Do you know how hard it is to find a full body pose reference for this little dude? SO HARD! I also think literally all of his attacks are ugly, but I found this one card that had these little stars and some white lightning lines, so I thought that’d be an awesome concept to explore, especially with bringing those background designs to the foreground.

I think he could’ve popped more if the background had been maybe yellow or red to highlight those colour points on his body, but I think he works like this.

Jolteon

YES. He is beauty, he is grace, the very visible mistake corrections are slapping me in the face. The lovely thing about acrylic is that them mistakes are SEEN. I still love him though. I think his line art would’ve been the most difficult with all those sharp points.

Jolteon is when I decided to be very conscious of posing and placement. With the others, you can see some deliberate choices, but not all of the previous paintings were this carefully thought out. I like the idea of having the determined attack pose, or with the peaceful ones, a flowing pose with lots of movement implications. Movement is one of my favourite things to display in my more abstract designs. Here it’s very prominent in the step forward sparking out and back.

Delcatty

I wanted to try something with the clean border. I think as a whole, I like the painted edges more because the bright white border tends to highlight those empty spaces rather than letting the empty spaces bring out the figure.

This was my fastest attempt, having been started and completed within about 3 hours including drying time. I think the background should have been a shade darker to allow for those purple motifs in Delcatty to really pop, but there’s also something kind of satisfying about the way parts of the figure blend into the background.

I was so lost on how to display Delcatty’s attack, so I decided to use those movement lines and bubbles extending out from the front to make it seem as though her shout is a power in itself. Almost like you’d see in manga or comic when a character is all caps-ing. I also liked the idea of adding individual movement lines to the tail, because my cat has a tail that flickers and moves a lot when he’s vocal.

Mismagius

Again with the border, but something about it worked here that didn’t with Delcatty, and I think it’s because of how filled up the space is. I saw the eye motif on one of Mismagius’ cards while I was researching and thought it’d be such a cool addition, and the way it brings attention to her actual eyes is an awesome bonus.

Colour theory kicked my ass with this one. You see those black shadows on the hat and one of her limbs? That shit is violet. But because of the background being that super deep plum violet, it comes out almost black. You have to shine a light on it to see the purple.

This one was a 3am crash course in How Badly Do I Wanna Screw My Sleep Schedule. It’s bad yall.

Eevee

This was a commissioned piece and is definitely my favourite of the bunch. The browns just really work together, and I love the honey colour of his eyes. I also love the almost front-facing determined pose with the movement lines and dots going up from the back and following the curve of the tail. I’m also quite happy with how the top left space doesn’t feel like “empty space” even though there’s nothing there. It brings more attention to Eevee himself without overcrowding or leaving it too empty. A good balance.