It's hard to believe that it has been exactly a year (and two days) since I shaded my old coloring of Rukia Kuchiki, and how far I've come since then—I bought a tablet, can shade abs a little better now, and still haven't seen an episode of Bleach.

Commemorating the one year anniversary of the first work I submitted on this account, I decided to revisit Rukia Kuchiki.

She's still wearing semi-see-through clothing, and I've made some strides in depicting it even more realistically than before. She's also still accompanied by a half-assed background, haha.

I did change up some things stylistically. Most notably, the style of her face is very different from before—maybe even beyond recognition. I don't know, we'll see if people can tell if it's Rukia. Also, because I used my own original lineart this time around, her outlines are much more bold and visual. In keeping with consistency, I decided to leave them in the final illustration. Admittedly, when I leave in the outlines, I'm usually afraid that it will weaken the shading. I think it turned out superb in this case, though.

Comments and criticism appreciated!

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EDIT: So I decided to fix up a few things that have been (literally) bothering me for over a year. I cleaned up the line art a bit and erased some parts where the shading went outside the lines. I cropped the sides a bit to give it more vertical flow. The text in the image was slightly modified for better readability, and the text in the description was slightly modified for more objectivity, haha.

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PAINTER/PHOTOSHOP
12 HOURS