Hikura Sensei

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This is Hikura-sensei. He's the most enigmatic and revered master at the dojo where Rhiannon and Kian are training.
He is a ninjitsu master with his own very unique style. He is known for walking the school and advising everyone including the teachers, and for his habit of hitting students with that stick of his when they do something wrong.
He saw real talent in Rhiannon and Kian and took them on as his own disciples. They are now training with him exclusively which gives them some neat privileges like ignoring most of the dojo's normal rules... but it also means they get hit by sensei's stick more often! Kian kinda hates him ... well a little anyway... But Rhiannon thinks he's hawt XD and constantly pesters him to sleep with her. Well she's just that kind of girl.
He's a rather elusive and mysterious figure however. And he would certainly admit he's pretty. :3

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Now the technical details...
OMG this took 3023095089432902343045 hours.
Okay seriously like probably 20+. I'm not sure. I spent SO MUCH TIME on this pic. I worked hard from the ground up using tutorials for anatomy to set a sketch and I redrew it until my hands bled. Then when I was finally happy with the sketch (prolly 4+hours work) I took it into photoshop and drew the background. The bg alone was like 6 hours. I did it all in one morning using an amazing tutorial for the tree: [link]
Then I took it into Sai (my first time working with Sai!) and reworked it 3483409430 times until I figured out Sai's tools. I ended up finally pausing and setting up sai by working on a few other sketches and using a sai tutorial. Then I finally went back and painted Hikura-sensei's skin and hair and clothes.
His skin was hard. After a while I gave up on it and did his clothes and hair. By the time I'd finished those, I had figured Sai out better and went back to his skin, started it over from scratch and was finally happy with it after like proly 6+ more hours total on the pic.

When I finally had all the base colors laid I stared at it for a while then decided that openCanvas was the place to do the lighting and atmosphere because after I'd actually learned how to do lighting really well in oC.
So I ported the pic to oC and did shadows and light like a maniac... been working on that ... for the past 3 hours at least.

I got close to the finish and was very unhappy with his face. I finally went back to the base layer in oC and touched up his face for at least half an hour and finally got it looking better. Then I had to go to each lighting and shading layer and adjust until it finally FINALLY looked like a normal face and not a shiney bulbous pop-eye face. ;( But at least it worked out!

So of course, finally back to Photoshop for a border, title, sig and a watermark. This is the first digital piece I've watermarked properly. I'm now thinking about going back and watermarking each of my paintings and reuploading them with a proper watermark... because I finally think my art is worth protecting.

And that's a true gift to me. I told myself I would go back to basics and improve my art to over 9000 and I am totally on that track now! I finally believe in my ability to be a good artist if I choose! I finally believe that I will go as far as I want to go!

Any and all comments and critiques are appreciated so much! I really want feedback on this piece.

Thank you all so much for your help, support and feedback along the way! Also, thank you to for helping me figure out how to check the anatomy and for the constant feedback throughout this piece! <3 <3 <3
Also thank you for critiquing my WiP!
You guys rock!


Hikura-sensei (c) Rohan Darksbane
Art (c) Arsiei Darksbane 2010

All rights reserved, do not distribute, edit or copy. If you do, a ninja will probably kill you. (Rhiannon most likely. She is possessive of sensei c_c;