This one actually had a surprisingly complicated thought process behind it all, despite its relative simplicity. It wasn’t really any one thing that made it fiddly, but rather lots of small decisions that I pored over.

It was actually one of the first sketches I roughed out along with my napping Buizel picture, so the pose was mostly sorted from the get-go. It was sorting his expression out that was a pain. Do I have him frowning in determination, or more neutral eyes? Should his mouth be open or closed? Should the ball be in or out of focus? What colours should be on the ball? I agonised over a bunch of those for quite some time. I also considered showing some of a beach in the background but realised it wouldn’t really fit the perspective. I’m still not 100% sure if all the decisions I went with in the end were for the best or not, but oh well.

I actually tried adding weight to the lines in this, so it looks like I did pick up at least one useful habit from Pokémon Art Academy.

And yes, I realise I’ve gone for another ‘sunny sky with clouds’ background so soon after my Chestnaught piece. :P It wasn’t actually intentional to reuse that style of background again, but rather it seemed to fit the piece. Admittedly I’m not as happy with how this background turned out compared to the Chesnaught one. I didn’t do as many fancy lighting effects, so it does look a little plainer. I partly avoided mimicking the effects I’d used before since I didn’t want to look I was reusing the same background idea *too* shamelessly.

But anyway! Volleyball Buizel. I’ve already got a pretty strong idea of what I want to draw next, so I can hopefully make a start on that soon. :)