fanart and fangifts

[marycrawford]

I painted this for mumblemumble's fandomtrees post at the very last minute - the deadline for this gifting challenge always gets extended and it was helpful for me this time.

"fanart of beach concert fun times" was a great prompt and I love Zhu Yilong's whole look during this event. Though I did make up most of the blue in his hair, to reference his role in the Land of Broken Hearts movie.

Side note: taking pictures of fanart in a sketchbook and then trying to get the colors in the photo to match what you're actually seeing is quite a ride. I did already know that the camera is never as good as the human eye (especially not a smartphone camera) but it's weird. I would welcome tips on how to photograph art stuff on your phone.



(fountain pen, brush pen, watercolor)

Earlier, for guardian_wishlist, I asked for Zhu Yilong pics and moodboards and all that, as well as Guardian fanfic, and I got many fabulous things that you should check out:

- beautiful pictures and a few clips/gifs from the Land of Broken Hearts premiere in Beijing, the beach concert, and the roadshows, carefully curated by mumblemumble. And I used one of those photographs as reference for this fanart, so it's a full circle of fannish joy.

- a fabulous Zhu Yilong slideshow (and download link) created by sakana17. I keep this slideshow open in a tab in my browser, for fannish joy and inspiration.

- a lovely evocative short fic by nnozomi about Shen Wei riding the trams in Dragon City, which is so relevant to my interests as I take trams every day and adore them very nearly as much as I adore Shen Wei. (I'm going to a sketch outing in a dutch train museum next weekend and I can't wait.)

- a Zhu Yilong/Ocean moodboard by yue_ix that is pure art. He really is a sea creature, and the fic inspiration is lying in wait for me every time I look at this. It's so gorgeous and brings so many ideas into life.

Comments

[trobadora]

SO GORGEOUS!!!!

(Zhu Yilong or your art? YES. Both. So much. ♥ ♥ ♥ )

[nnozomi]

oh, that painting really feels _like_ him! Lovely.
(and thank you for the kind rec, I love it that I wrote about trams inspired by the ones in my city and they worked with the ones in yours) <3

[kat_lair]

Gorgeous painting, the hair in particular.

[clevermanka]

Oh that is GORGEOUS. Gosh I loved that look on him. An era too short, by far.

Thank you for the link to nnozomi's fic. I'd missed it.

[tinny]

Gorgeous art! <3

I have a similar problem with photographing art, and the only thing I know is to make sure the lighting is good - i.e. take the picture during daylight hours, but not with the sun directly shining onto it. I still have to color-correct afterwards but at least this way the colors come out the best way possible and the picture is crisp and not blurry.

Also thank you for the links, I didn't have time to look at the trees yet!

[grayswandir]

This is lovely! <3 I love how you did the black ink shading on his hair, and the watercolor is so pretty. I do know what you mean about phone cameras not getting the colors exactly as in real life -- I think you can probably get a closer match by putting your phone camera into manual mode and adjusting the white balance (I haven't tried it with a phone camera, but it's how you'd get more accurate colors with a digital camera). But the muted colors in the version you posted look really nice!