I was able to dedicate quite a bit of time to my illustrations in February.
Including pieces without backgrounds, I managed to complete three illustrations—a personal best for me!
I’d love to keep this momentum going and get faster at churning out more work.
To help “Future Me” look back on this, I’m going to record the (approximate) time spent and my thoughts on each piece.
Read more: Summary of February 2026Kasane Teto
I just love Kasane Teto.
My art style and the overall vibe of my work are still all over the place, so this Teto looks quite different from my usual ones, but I drew this with a focus on the fabric and the lighting.
Using two different colored light sources was also a first for me.
Looking back at it now, many parts seem a bit sloppy, but I actually had a lot of fun while drawing it.
I finished and posted it in February, but since I actually started on January 26th, it’s a bit of a “cheat” to count it as a February piece, haha. It took a total of about 6 hours and 41 minutes.
That’s actually pretty fast for me!
When I try to fit the whole body in a standard standing pose, the character inevitably ends up looking so small. I wonder how I can fix that?
It’s tough.
Shirakami Fubuki
Fubuki from Hololive.
I’m a pretty big Hololive fan—not so much a “single oshi” type, but more of a casual “箱推し” (group fan). Fubuki, in particular, is so sharp and witty; she’s a blast to watch.
No background this time, but it was my first attempt at a serious profile shot (side view).
I feel like I’ve gotten much better at drawing cute profile views compared to before!
This one took about 7 hours and 39 minutes.
It was also my first time doing a bust-up shot focusing mainly on the face, and those big fluffy animal ears were so much fun to draw.
I went with a close-up because I wanted to gain experience with profile views. I originally wanted to draw her with her mouth open, but I couldn’t get it right, so I eventually gave up and drew it closed.
I definitely want to challenge myself with an “open-mouth profile” next time.
Mori Calliope
Calli having a drink at a bar.
She’s from hololive-EN, and I’m a huge fan of hers. Even though my English isn’t great, I still love tuning into her gaming streams.
I especially love her singing voice—I listen to her tracks all the time during my commute.
Setting aside whether it’s “good” or not for a moment, I went all out and drew a full background for this one.
The image above is the cropped version I posted, and I ended up cutting out a huge chunk of the background. It feels a bit like, “Man, I spent so much time on that…” but I really wanted the character to stand out, so I scaled it up and kept Calli right in the center until the very last second.
Looking back, if I had realized this at the rough sketch stage, I could’ve saved a lot of time and wouldn’t have had to “throw away” the parts I worked so hard on. Definitely a point to reflect on.
But hey, if I think of those cut-out sections as “nutrients” that helped me grow as an artist, I can stay positive about it.
As a way to lay the original piece to rest, I’ll post the full, uncropped version here too.
For this piece, my “first-time challenge” was trying out a thick, painterly style (厚塗り).
Even my cel-shading is a bit shaky, but I’ve always loved the look of painterly art and really wanted to gain some experience with it.
Including a full background definitely played a part, but this illustration took a staggering 23 hours and 16 minutes.
I was hit with some unexpected setbacks, like ear surgery and the flu, but I’m just glad I managed to finish it within February.
I really love how the “eeek!” (grimacing) mouth turned out—it’s so cute.
On the flip side, it made me realize once again that I’m not great at drawing hair with a sense of three-dimensionality.
Also, I haven’t been doing traditional line art lately. I use a “Real Pencil” brush for my sketches, and while I love how it feels to draw with, leaving those lines as-is while refining the drawing creates too much graininess. It really got in the way during the coloring process, and I ended up having to redraw lines while painting, which felt like a total waste of effort.
I’ll need to rethink my workflow for the next one.
Summary
My drawing time for February was as follows:
The total time isn’t explicitly shown in the chart, but for February alone, I clocked in at 34 hours and 36 minutes.
I’ve accepted that there are just some days when I can’t touch my pen at all, but even so, I feel like I really got some solid work done this month.
The graph above was generated in a spreadsheet using logs from the “Drawing Monitor App” I built a while back.
By the way, the “monitoring” part of the app isn’t working well at all, lol.
I’m thinking of taking some time soon to just overhaul it into a simple logging tool.
It would be so much easier if I could visualize the graphs directly in the app and have it spit out weekly or monthly summaries.
Ideally, I’d love to be able to categorize the time by specific illustration, but I don’t want to fiddle with an app every single time I start drawing. So, I’ll probably stick to just logging and displaying summary graphs for now.
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