Art by Nabs

Artist from Germany || Multifandom and Original Artworks~ || She/Her || Don't repost my art without permission! Thanks!

[nabs-draws]

Maybe it is time for a little introduction!

Hi Tumblr people, I am Nabs! Your friendly neighbourhood Artist. My main focus is Background Art and Illustration , but I occasionally draw Fanart as well (sometimes I go through phases where I draw a lot of Fanart..)

I treat this Tumblr blog as a sketchbook, rather than a fullblown Portfolio, so you might see stuff here that I usually wouldn't post on my other social Media channels (maybe Cara, if I'm up to it.)

Here are all my socials:

Instagram

Cara

Bluesky

Tiktok (even when I am really inactive there)

And of course, my Portfolio. (which I desperately need to update)

And here is a list of Media I enjoy (and which I occasionally draw fanart for):

Gaming: BG3, Disco Elysium, Horizon Zero Dawn Deltarune/Undertale, OneShot, Omori, Milk inside a bag of Milk, Katamari Damacy, Needy Streamer Overload, Stardew Valley, Night in the Woods, Ni No Kuni, Final Fantasy (primarily 7 and 10), Kingdom Hearts, Persona Series (with Persona3 being my favorite game at this point.), The Legend of Zelda, Puyo Puyo

Anime: Serial Experiments Lain, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Madoka Magica, No. 6, Beyblade (from Bakuten Shoot to G-rev), OG Yu-Gi-Oh!, Digimon, The Summer Hikaru Died. Life lessons with Uramichi-Oniisan, Skullface Bookseller Honda-san, Welcome to the NHK, Ranma 1/2, Witch Hat Atelier, Secrets of a Silent Witch

Manga: Oyasumi Punpun, Asagao to Kase-san, Blood on the Tracks, Flower of Evil

Shows/J-Drama: Glass Heart, The amazing World of Gumball, Adventure Time,

Music: Vocaloid, Gorillaz, Blur, Pulp, and many more but I rarely draw them and therefore it's irrelevant to discuss.

A tiny FAQ:

What Tools do you use?

Software: Photoshop, Affinity (mostly for editorial and vector based stuff), Blender (mostly for building quick refs) and Magicposer (for ref building)

Tablet: Xp-pen Artist 12 pro (which was a sponsored gift by them in 2022).

For traditional Art I use a dollarstore mechanical Pencil, Faber Castell "B" leads and a Art Creation Sketchbook. For coloring I usually use Polychromos or my Schminke Aquarell set and Faber Castell Inkliner.

2. Are you open for Commissions?

No. However, I am open for Inhouse work, so if you're an art director looking for a BG artist or someone that helps you out with Graphic Design and Characterwork, hit me up!

3. How long have you been drawing?

Since childhood. However I learned how to draw professionally at age 25 (still in the learning phase tho)

4. Did you went to Art school?

Yes and no. I technically went to a Design School with my Main focus on Media Design and Illustration. Before Design school I was a Graphic Design Assistent.

5. Your biggest inspiration?

Aside from the fandoms listed above, I am also very inspired by Art History and Philosophy. Nature , Fashion (primarily Harajuku Fashion) my peers work and of course, Pinterest (luckily they have filters now to throw out all the AI trash!)

6. What inspired you to become a Professional Artist?

There have been many instances. I think I read my first german Comic at age 10 and realized "Hold on, this can be a profession?". The bigger Shift came through Big Hero 6, and primarily looking at the concepts for that movie. It made me want to become a concept artist very badly but later I settled on BG art temporarily.

[nabs-draws]

Just a little Beauty and Beast doodle :)

[nabs-draws]

Finally done with my 3D Blender Model for the Dojima living Room. The model may not be perfect but I am still very proud of myself for pushing through and to learn something I have been avoiding for years. And since I only build them for reference purposes, I don't need to care for the perfection here :)

And to be fair, it's not my first time modeling. I usually do it once every blue moon, than procrastinate and draw. Than jump back into Blender to build references, than Blender won't see me again for the next 3 years. It is a really bad habit of mine! There are also some things I simply didn't bother to correct even if I knew how too (speaking of you, tiny blue bucket). I had way too much fun designing everything else.. And since I plan to rebuild Leblanc and the living room of Iwatodai Dorm as well , it won't be the last time I use blender. (I also thought of translating the same scenes into pixelart and explore every possibility with the Persona games. Especially while I'm currently playing Shin Megami Tensei Devil Children Shiro no Sho on the GBC and wondered what Persona would look like as a Gameboy game...)

Here are some progress shots of the modeling process:

[allthingswhumpyandangsty]

not my tweet but I thought it would be a good psa for artists here too

[ayy-junipei]

Oh this is a common scam I find at work. Any file that:

isn't jpg, jpeg, pdf, or png

Is a file extension you don't recognise (this one is a visual basic file, used for scripting, but others like exe or bat are used)

has a very low or unexpected file size (this one's is less than 1KB, or 0.001MB, a good reference should be at least 500KB)

Is likely a scam. Stay safe kids.

[nabs-draws]

Heartbeat, heartbeat, it keeps on poundin'

[nabs-draws]

It all returns to nothing...

Welcome to the "Making of" section of this image. Today I'd like to talk about the process and the idea behind the image!

This illustration is a mixed Media project where I combined my Blender training with my passion for painting.

This image was my base build!

My idea was to combine the rather bleak motive we see in "the end of EVA" , the one where we see Reis multiplying and filling up spaces, with a rather hopeful note of the Evangelion Rebuild movies. I always imagined what the third impact could look like in Eva 2.0, since we didn't get to see as many "weird" imagery as we did in EoE! So thus, the idea was born after creating this model. Originally I just planned it to be a practice piece. But as I kept painting on top of it, I somehow couldn't stop and I had way too much fun working on it.

A rough overpaint + sketch. I also decided on a sunset kind of lightning since EVA 0.2 played "Tsubasa wo Kudasai" , a song that you usually play during Graduation. But I heared some stores also use this song right before closing the store, signalizing that the day might end today but there will always be a new tomorrow. A sunset has an equal meaning to me, thus the light setting.

Originally I planned to keep Rei faceless, but instead of having a feeling of "eeriness" , the image felt rather incomplete, so I added the face back into it at a later stage.

There was also a stage where I removed the "plant idea" but later added it back in, to make the school look a little bit more ambandonet.

In the end I decided to add some glow on the window, some very light godrays and slapped a color lookup on the image (Tension Green to be more precise). In order to get away from the reddishness. Oh and added Rei's Face back into the image again.

[nabs-draws]

If you lie, I'll stick a thousand needles in your eye....

Lately I follow a lot of artists (especially on the game Muse Dash) using this kind of halftone PopUp style and I wanted to see if I'm able to pull it off too. So I took the likeness of our lord and Savior Hatsune Miku and tried to replicate the style as good as I could. (using Kyle T Websters Brushes for the Halftone effect mostly, and his splatter brushes for the splatter effect)

[nabs-draws]

I wanted to learn how to draw Portraits better , so I decided to draw Ryuji and Pharos!

My theme for both Portraits was Night and Day. With Pharos representing the Night and Ryoji representing the day.

Pharos was relatively easy to paint but Ryoji took me multiple attempts and I still struggled to get him right. I decided to keep the image this way now. Maybe I am going to draw him again in the future. But I think, for my first attempt of ever painting him, the job I did wasn't too bad….

[nabs-draws]

"It’s the Earth that’s rotten, so I can’t walk straight"

A little Takopis Original Sin Fanart/Study For the BG I used some References from Akine Coco. They're photos always inspired me a lot and I wanted to see if I'm able to recreate a similar vibe in my artworks, mixed with some Elements from the show "Takopi no Genzai". It was also a good opportunity to study how to render Plants. For the plant textures, I was playing along with the Brushes by Devin Elle Kurtz. (not an ad, I just want to give proper credits for the sources I used in order to recreate this image.)

[nabs-draws]

It's Arle and Cabuncle!

Another little style/color test. Man, I feel like I coudl talk about Puyo Puyo all day long...

[nabs-draws]

A little Amitie doodle. Been playing Puyo Puyo 20th Anniversary lately and I love everything about the game!

[nabs-draws]

Big cake, round cake, right in front of me Who do you think this cake could be?

This image was now a full moths in the making...man, my Stamina ran low with all those little details but I think I gonna call it done for now!

[nabs-draws]

Finally done with my favorite (and most relateable) dork: Yusuke Kitagawa!

[nabs-draws]

It's Ryuji! FOR REAL!!!!!

(finally done with the paitning of him. Now lets move on to Yusuke!)

Some people also asked me during the WIP post of how I took Ref images inside P5 Strikres. I simply used the screenshot function of my PC, angled the photos to get proper references and tried to translate the image into my painting style.

[nabs-draws]

When I arrive at where you are, we may not appear to be as we were...

But we'll make another promise to keep

[nabs-draws]

My experience of getting into Akeshu. As I played through Persona 5, I fell in love with Yusuke and also thougt that Yusuke and Joker had some vibes (especially after playing the 8/9 hangout and most of the dialoge option between Joker and Yusuke..)

Yet, than rank 8 with Akechi happened and I slowly but surely got into the doomed BL Pairing as well LMAO. I enjoy both ships btw.

And as I was drawing my last Persona 5 fanart, I somehow had to think of that "Distracted boyfriend" meme and thought "it would be super funny if I draw Joker , Yusuke and Akeshi that way LMAO. so yeah, that's how this illustration happened.

[nabs-draws]

Finished P5R a few days ago and I cannot stop thinking about them...