hetalia | [Art] Dunkirk

Entry tags:

[Art] Dunkirk

Title: Dunkirk

Author/Artist: Dmajor7th

Character(s) or Pairing(s): France/England

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: BIG IMAGES. Blood. Anger. Love and Sadness. Implied violence.

Summary: A fic-art trade with

metallic_sweet. Her part of the trade is here.

Previous art posts: [Shibari (NSFW)] [The Littlest Brother] [In Comfort, In Quiet]

Note: All of my fanworks can be found at

dm7_lorem_ipsum

[Preview]

Final piece in total.

France's head close up.

England's head close up.

England's body close up.

France's shirt close up.

Line art.

Materials: Faber-Castell Pencils (2H-8B), putty rubber/erasure, Staedtler triplus fineliner, Derwent Artists colouring pencils, Winsor & Newton Designers Gouache, Winsor & Newton ink (crimson), Letraset Promarker alcohol pens, Faber-Castell PITT artist pens (Indian Ink). I had the lineart photocopied in only yellow and coloured that.

If you like it, please comment! If you don't, please tell me- I'm always looking for ways to improve. Concrit encouraged. ♥

I am selling a print of any of my works if anyone is interested. Please Private Message me if interested.

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Uwah, its been a while. I love their expressions.

(For some strange reason, I got a whole Picasso-vibe at this image.)

Picasso? XD Where do you see that?

Thank you! It's always a compliment to be compared to one of the greats. <3

Also, if you like my stuff then you can keep up to date here:

dm7_lorem_ipsum

Edited 2009-08-09 22:18 (UTC)

Honestly, Dunkirk wouldn't have come to mind with this drawing. Without looking at the title, I'd think "Battle of Castillon". It's very reminiscent of medieval religious artwork, like something you'd see in a 15th Century portrait or stained glass. It's rather striking in that way.

This is no criticism at all. It just doesn't say "Dunkirk" to me because of the style. But if you showed this to me and told me that this is what Francis and Arthur looked like after the final battle of the Hundred Years' War...oh, yeah, definitely. And I'd love to see other appropriate characters in this style (I think that you'd do one incredible Gilbert in it). So keep it up.

Thank you for your comment. :3

Yes, I see what you mean about the medieval style- it's the heads in profile, exaggerated, simplified features, flat colours and disproportion between the head and the body. I personally really like inappropriate styling- when you take a style from one period and apply it to a scene from a different time period.

Thing about Castillon is that was when France and England were fighting as enemies. This piece was a prompt from

metallic_sweet ; she asked me to capture her WWII France/England dynamic. There is a lot of resentment between the two, and a lot of anger and residual hatrid- but there is also a lot of love, a lot of compassion and a lot of fear for each other's safety. This conflict leads to extreme frustration, which is what I tried to express (especially with France).

I chose Dunkirk because that was a very prominent point during WWII where the British came to aid France (along with Poland and Belgium).

Also, I'm not really capable of doing a different style. I guess I'm just a monk deep down. XD

oh wow. This is incredible. I *love* your style.

:D Thank you so much! <3

Wow. o_O That's and interesting style there. It's almost like... medieval paintings...?

You're not the first to say that!

You like it?

Haha. ;; Well, I have to admit it's kinda weird to me. xD They look such ugly old men. orz *superficial* But it is a cool style anyway and you do it really well. Also, it's nice to see them drawn with so much more character, the simplified manga style just can't give you all the impression a picture like this can.

Oh yeah, but now that I look at it, I think England's arm should be longer, comparing to his body and head. And looking at those earlier works of yours, I think your forte is definitely details, but the whole, the... I don't know the word in English, anyway the "big picture" is what you should work on. Perhaps try to draw a little... lighter, you know? To take away the stiffness and the awkwardness (the latter is not actually bad at all but it is there). Though I'm definitely not saying you should change your style, not at all. I think it'd need a bit lighter touch to help make it more united but not too much, because you clearly have good strong drawing hand and it's definitely your own, unique style so hold on to it.

Your colourwork is great and the details (as I said) are gorgeous, though.

^May sound like I know what I'm talking about but I'm not sure if that's true.

Actually, I think I could get used to this style, though. I do love it how you got the characters'... well, character shape so distinctly. Roma-jii looks just so... idek, he looks ROMAN and he looks... sort of, well he looks like he could be the friendly old uncle who lives next door. Real, I think that's the word I'm looking for. And the same goes for France and England here. China doesn't, though, his face looks weirdly blank compared to the others and his mouth is clearly crooked. But then again his hand and arm look amazing.

Oh, and I almost forgot: There's a lot of feeling in your pictures, and a clear mood. I really like the shibari one especially. Somehow... it manages to express so much emotion even though England's face isn't even showing.

:D Thank you! I'm glad you like my style. :3

I'm not surprised you find them ugly- although I appreciate the manga and anime formats, I have become incredibly bored of the uniformity both within the genre and between the character's facial structures. This isn't a critisism of the genre in it's own right, because that is just how it is; but personally, I've gone right off it. When I look at manga!France and manga!China, they look exactly the same to me in the face, even though China is Mongoloid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongoloid) and France is Caucasoid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caucasoid). The only distinction I can make between the characters are their 'secondary' characteristics- hair, clothing, facial expression. All of these things are variable, unlike facial structure. That means all the characters must stick with the same haircut, the same clothing and often hold a similar range of facial expressions (for example: America is often " >:D " , England is " >:| " and Canada " ):> ") I find this extremely restricting.

I spent a lot of time deciding what France and England's facial structures were going to be like; I broke it down into nose shape, forehead slope, lip thickness, jawline, ear shape, general facial proportions and colouring. I wanted France to look 'French' and England to look 'English'. I spent a lot of time researching the differences between facial features within white Europeans, and the above picture is my conclusion. France's nose is actually Nicolas Sarkozy's (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Sarkozy). XD

(actually, This cartoon of Sarkozy's profile (http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46114000/jpg/_46114826_facekarchee_afp226b.jpg), which shows a simplified and exaggerated structure of his nose, shows you where I got France's nose).

Same with with Rome, actually. You know the term 'Roman Nose'? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquiline_nose) Well, that's what he has in that picture. I also wanted him to look very masculine, adult and preditory; I also find in manga is it difficult to distinguish between a man and a woman (unless they are very different in age or they are archetypes, eg "Manly Evil Villain" and "Extremely Beautiful Temptress"). I spent a lot of time looking at children's profiles to get chibi!England's face.

China's face...yeah, China's face, not so good. :/ It's the first time I've ever drawn a Mongoloid person, so I can see how I got it wrong. Generally, the Mongoloid facial structure is 'flatter' than Caucasoid- flatter cheeks, certainly, but also a flatter eyebrow ridge, so I may have just accidently made china look like the got hit in the face with a frying pan. >.< I'm still learning! D:

And honestly? I just don't think the Nations are pretty. Not at all. Some are handsome, and I believe America has Hollywood Good Looks (though he's had a some surgery to make it that way). But I can't envisage any of them as 'pretty boys'. Especially not England. England is awkward looking- uncomfortable in his own skin. I do think France is handsome, but in the old fashioned French film actor way, like Jean-Louise Barrault (http://www.geocities.com/worldcinema/actors/images/barrault.jpg). ~~And not actually obsessed with sex, but that's another rant.~~

And yes, I need to work on proportions and anatomy. It, along with fabrics and lighting, are some of the most difficult aspects of art. But I just need to practice practice practice now!

Thank you for the compliment on the colour work- I do it all by hand (no digital skillz, you see). It's WORK.

Actually, I have a question- maybe you can answer?:
I put a lot of work into my pictures, maybe somewhat arrogantly, I think they are of a high quality. However, I don't get many comments for my art. Is my style off putting? As you say, they are 'ugly old men', and not in sexual or suggestive poses - does this mean lots of Hetalia fangirls only really want to see pretty boys making out? Sorry, I know that's not a very nice thing to say- but I have noticed that some of the best commented pics are ones of Pretty Nations Making Out. I don't know. I'm confuz.

Many thanks,

Dm7

PS- feel free to friend

dm7_lorem_ipsum, my art LJ. I'm also happy to add you as a friend to my personal LJ. You are a fun person. :3

Yeah, I get what you mean. :/ It's really annoying in most manga in general, because not only is it restricting, it also makes recognizing characters really hard when they are taken out of their usual context for example. And it's just so damn boring that they all look the same. You can't really even tell who's actually good-looking either. Like France says Canada's face is bland but there isn't much difference between Canada's face and his OWN.

Wow, you really put a lot of work into it. :D It shows too, though. They do look very different and I even though I'm not an expert at all, I get the feeling that they are really somewhat like "typical" French and English faces.

And about China: I did suspect it was like that. I know, I have a lot of trouble drawing Asians too. I've been practicing it a lot lately, and also making the distinction between Caucasian and Asian. Or... Mongoloid? Uhh; whatever. Using photographs as models helps, though. But I'm also especially trying to learn to make the difference in a comic/simplified style. One thing is that I want to fight against the view that's deep in my own head too that caucasian is the "basic" face and others have to be marked. Like it's not an Asian if it has no slanty eyes.

For example this face (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Smile-tpvgames.gif), the "basic" smiley symbol. Well, you can of course say it doesn't really look like an African person. But there's no real reason for it not to be Asian. Small eyes, round face, yellow skin, no distinctive nose (as in no nose at all...) -- it actually looks more like a caricature of an Asian person than a European. Still we consider it European since it's not marked as an Asian. (Also, most often we consider it male because it's not marked as a female but that's another rant.) So I'm interested in how to mark someone Caucasian instead. There are some occations in manga that's situated in Japan and has foreigners as random passing side characters that are drawn in a different way from other characters. And from my Chinese teacher I learned that the Chinese jokingly call Europeans "big-noses". "Big nose, big eyes, big mouth, everything is big", quoting her.

Also I have no idea how to draw Native Americans... ;;;

Heh, the definition of "pretty"... Oh well. I see what you mean though. And I really think with the nations, their life should show on their face, some way.

And actually that actor who's picture you linked? He looks a lot like how I imagine France looking as an actual person, the facial features, I mean. (And I actually think he is pretty but...) Actually, I kind of ended up feeling like drawing France more realistically myself too... Haha, he's my favourite chara and all.

And to your question... unfortunately, I think it's exactly like that. Pretty Nations Making Out is definitely what the fandom most wants. But luckily we do have people like you who try to bring some variety into the mix for those of us who get bored of Pretty Nations Making Out.

Ahaha... I'm fun? :D Er, thanks? As for your offer...hm, why not. You seem like an interesting person. I don't know if you'll like reading my journal though. ;; I'm afraid there might be a lot of silly whining and long rants and who knows what else. And possible fangirling too. ;;; And and and *feeling self-conscious if you didn't notice....*

Hodamn, that's radsauce. Good job!

XD Radsauce.

Thank you!

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[Art] Dunkirk

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