Sailor Cosmos

Hello everyone ^_^

I hope you're all doing well! Been a little while hasn't it? And yet, I'm still doing better in terms of timing than I've done in the past, huh? Anyways, I've really missed you guys, as always. ^_^

Anyways, a few weeks ago, I posted a sketch in my "Scraps" section here at deviantart for "Sailor Cosmos," which, as I said then, I've never drawn before!! I talked quite a bit about the intial drawing in the description of the sketch so for those who are interested, please check it out at:



And so here I have the finished version! ^___^ Despite its simplicity, I must say I faced a few challenges with it starting with the background. Having seen a lot of the original creator's (the esteemed Naoko Takeuchi's) illustrations, (as well as owning a number of her art books) I noticed that she often liked to add textures and what not to her own images of the Sailor Senshi. And so, I wanted to try something a little different myself in homage to that more illustrative style.

To do that, I started off by hitting my nearest arts and craft store and picking up a rubber stamp with a design that I liked. I wanted something that looked like a floral pattern or lace, which is similar to what she uses in her images. When I finally decided on one that was more or less what I was looking for with it, with it, I used it all throughout the painting, to incorporate that overlapping design.

Though.... it turned out to be trickier than I had anticpiated and I had to rework A LOT of it by hand!! @_@ Ironically, I thought that using a rubber stamp would make the process a little easier, but in a way it made it MUCH harder. But in the end, I was rather satisified with the end result so hopefully it was worth all the hard work.

Anyways, as I stated before, I already talked about the image in its sketch form, (in the link above) but in a nutshell, since I've never actually painted Sailor Cosmos, I thought I'd go with the feeling and just do it. I thought it would be a nice challenge since there was never an "anime" verison of the character; well, unless you count the darkened figure that MAY have been Sailor Cosmos at the end of the last episode of the anime....

As I mentioned in the description of the sketch, this form is "supposed" to be Sailor Moon's final incarnation (whatever that means exactly) so I figured that this was as mature as she'd ever look, perhaps even more so than when she was Neo Queen Serenity. So I wanted to take care to make her appear as a grown woman, maybe more like her own mother the original Queen Serenity, given the silver hair. Though she may not become Sailor Cosmos until eons after her time as Crystal Tokyo's queen, I got the distinct impression that whatever future it was that she came from, that it was rather bleak; hence the reason why she appears rather somber in my image.

From what I remember in the manga, she took a great risk coming from her own time, first in the form of Chibi Chibi (in the manga version as opposed to the anime verison) only to later reveal herself as Sailor Cosmos to Sailor Moon. Seemingly, she despaired over a seemingly endless battle with the entity known as Chaos, and came back to the past to end things once and for all, no matter the consequences.....

Whether it was true or not, I also got the feeling that she was alone in those battles in her own time. Otherwise why resort to such drastic measures?

Anyhow, I said much of this in the sketch version as I said before so I won't repeat myself TOO much.

So there you have it everyone! ^_^ I hope you like the piece! Aside from the somewhat aid I received using the rubber stamp, the image was done by hand using opague water color paints! Take care now!! All of you! Until next time then! ^_-

yamigirl21