Art Blog #5: Drawing Shohoku's Megane-kun!

The touch of the basketball...
The sound of the court ..
These things remind me of why I fell in love with this sport...
-Kiminobu Kogure, SlamDunk

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Konnichiwa Hivers, yo! yo! yo! It's your ridgette again, and for today I'm going to share the process of drawing a fanart of my favorite character in SlamDunk: Kogure!!!

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Kiminobu Kogure is Shohoku's vice captain, and he's the only one who has been with Akagi in basketball for three years. He is friendly, gentle, and empathetic, but despite his gentleness, Kogure can show firmness and brutal honesty whenever he needs to. Also, despite the fact that he's one of the side characters, Kogure is definitely one of the important figures on the Shohoku basketball team. His simple yet constant words of affirmation for the Shohoku's basketball team (especially his praises for Sakuragi) did really contribute to their improvement. Also, Kogure is basically the first person on the bench that they turn to whenever one of the starting five needs to be subbed. He's definitely the sixth man of the Shohoku basketball team.

Enough for Kogure's brief description; I'll now proceed to sharing the process of drawing him.

1. First, I made a rough sketch (a really rough one) from the multiple references that I have—references for the pose and also for the character details. I'm really familiar with Kogure's character details, but as much as possible, I want to stick with his original character design, so references are really a must.

2. Next, after the rough sketch, I erased the unnecessary lines, and then I started tracing the sketches and drawing the additional details.

3. After the erasing, tracing, and drawing, I finally moved on to coloring it.

4. Since I'm using watercolor pencils, I decided to blend some colors with a wet brush.

5. I don't really like empty or hollow spaces, so I cut triangles from the left-out construction paper I have.

6. Then I glued them to the empty spaces on the edges of the page.

7. There were empty spaces, so I searched for Kogure lines from the anime. I wrote them down in the empty spaces.

8. After filling in the empty spaces, I erased some lines from the drawings.

Tadah—it's done!

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Aside from daddy figure fetishes, I also have a fetish for meganes. Well, not really all megane, but Kogure is definitely one of the megane I really love. It wasn't that hard to draw him because, lately, I've been absentmindedly sketching his face. I really like his facial aesthetics: his eyeglasses, his eyes, and his lack of double eyelids; everything about him looks so gentle and cute. He's definitely one of the rare gentle characters I like.

Like any other drawing of mine, I have regrets for this one. I'm visualizing creases for the basketball uniform, but I somehow forgot it during the coloring process. I just remembered it after I finished it. So why didn't I draw it? Well, I became a coward. I became afraid of messing it all up.

My fear of clothing creases somehow stemmed from my previous unfortunate experiences. I totally messed it up before, and I don't want to repeat it again. Anyway, I know I'll overcome it someday, but for now, I'll stick with my comfort zone.

That's all for now, Hivers! Thanks for being with me 'til the end. I hope to see you in my next blog! So again..

Arigatou and Mata-ne!