More tablet practice! this one started out as a bust shot (if you can call it that) of Xai all coiled up just as a bit of practice, but then before I knew it I'd sketched more of the cocoon, then the whole thing, then the coils looping around it, then the tree, then Kaa himself... I get carried away sometime XD Boy it helps to use references. this was another example of trying to draw Kaa and failing miserably. he didn't look quite as bad as some of my old arts of him, but still wasn't quite right lol. until I pulled up a bunch of screenshots from the movie anyway. He definitely has a very interesting and fun design and I've fallen in love with analyzing how they drew and animated Kaa. For a character based off a species that doesn't really emote at all and doesn't even have eyelids to blink, Kaa is one of the most dynamicly expressive characters in movies and it's really fun to draw him. I need to try doing some of him frustrated or sad or having other emotions sometime too haha.
Xai is also fun to do though because he's my fluffy boy. even if he's gotten into some trouble here again. And yes, I know it's a bit of a cheesy and overused line XD but I think about (and sometimes find the time to draw) more original scenes all the time. I just like coming back to these classic scenes and reimagining them over and over lol. Like most do.
This one just turned out so nice in the sketch I couldn't resist finishing it. I tried to replicate the atmosphere of the 1st scene with Kaa in the original Jungle Book, so I made it very dark, desaturated and blue. though I feel like this took away a bit from now nice the forms look, so I've included some alternate versions above. These include a textless version, a set without the over shading, and a set without the highlights and scale texture either, leaving only the flat colours. Though I did add a bit of darkening on Xai's colours which I think I just left on with all the shading too cus it balanced the values a bit more.
Kaa was also tricky to come up with colours for. Well by Was I mean Is. I've dranw him plenty of times but I'm usually winging it. so I decided to grab a few different refs that show Kaa's colours in different sources (since they're all fairly inconsistent, even official ones) and actually made several sets of Kaa's colours all changed to fit the exact colours from these screenshots, and then I messed with the opacity to combine them, and did a few select other grabs and a few adjustments in order to try and create the truest colours for Kaa. or at least what I want to use from now on. So if you find yourself struggling to get his colours right (browns are surprisingly tricky!) feel free to use the flat colour version of this as a reference to colorpick from! (again, just don't do that with Xai cus I darkened him a little.... also 90% of him is not visible.)
Overall, while there may be more important things I should be working on, I'm glad to be getting more familiar with a device that is making my drawing a little more convenient. As much as my Huion already helped a bunch. And it's good to do stuff between commissions anyway, and while I love my brony fans, I know a lot of you come here for this stuff too, so I hope you enjoy XD
--- https://linktr.ee/FluffyXai For galleries, Patreon and more I release pictures like this way earlier to Patreon by the way, cus there's the initial early release period (£6+), and then, like this pic, I just forget to upload for ages. Sooooo patrons got quite the early access here XD
