Yuki (Uesugi) Eiri
Eiri in Kimono

I originally sketched this up while at the 2004 Japanese Autumn festival. I pretty much completed it a few days later then promptly forgot about it while real life hammered on me.

When I rediscovered it in June 2005, along with some other drawings, I decided to sign off on it and scan it. This time I scanned at 150dpi. It is something I am trying to get in the habit of doing all the time now. I pumped up the contrast and actually used two layers of the drawing in Multiply mode to get it darker. As always, I had to clean up all the scanner chatter in the white areas.

The kimono texture is a built-in pattern fill in Photoshop. The opacity is taken down quite low so the drawing lines can be seen through it.

The shell pattern for the kimono was built from a font called Orient Patterns. I took one of the patterns and made three more copies, flipped them around and made the pattern for the kimono. I defined it as a pattern in Photoshop so it would tile in easily. The opacity is also low so the kimono texture and the drawing lines can be seen.

Right after I completed the black and white cg, I decided to colour this one, too, just for the hell of it. The colouring would not take very long, except for the hair details, so I just plunged in and did the work.

I used some of the cel shading techniques I use for oekaki for the skintones. The colouring is a little subtle here, on purpose. I really did not want the colouring to overshadow the drawing.

The kimono colour's opacity is low so the drawing lines and the additional patterns can be seen.

Along with Vejiita, Eiri is one of my all-time favorite manga/anime characters to draw.