ART: Sexy Sensei

Drawing anime girls is not something I do very often, and as such it is a subject matter in which I woefully lack experience. Still, I do occasionally get the urge to dabble in it, though almost all of the time these attempts never progress beyond a half-finished sketch. What you see here is a rare exception.

Yukari Tanizaki from Azumanga Daioh! is one of my all-time favourite anime characters. I am usually not into over-the-top, chaotic characters but there's something about Yukari that captivates me. The out-of-control genki girl behaviour is off-putting to me and I've been told by my friends that it is curious how much I love Yukari when I absolutely despise Tomo from the same show, but I think what makes Yukari actually likeable is that unlike Tomo, she at least seems to be contributing something beyond just wreaking havoc and exhausting everyone around her 24/7. She is actually teaching things to her students and has enough self-awareness to not always let the "genkiness" fully take over her. As a result of all this, I think the ultimate appeal of Yukari, at least to me personally, is that she's a mature authority figure that still retains youthful playfulness.

(Now, if we get into her being a 'girlfailure' – as Zoomers like to call them – who drinks way too much, yeah... I suppose that's a bigger issue; nevertheless, this is a fictional character in one of the most defining slice-of-life anime shows of the early 2000s, so I'm willing to look past certain problems)

As for Yukari's looks, she is definitely one of the curvier characters in the original manga as well as the anime. Looks-wise, Yukari is top-notch: her tits are bigger than her colleague Nyamo's, and she seems to be very much aware of her own attractiveness as proven by her own dialogue and choice of swimwear, so I'd like to think that it's her loud personality and selfishness that seems to be dooming her to a single life. While I normally tend to be into girls with shorter hair, Yukari's flowing and wavy long hair is amongst one of my favourites of all anime girls and women.

When embarking on this sketch, I knew I wanted to make something based on Yukari's teasing nature and her status as a teacher of (likely very horny) male students. Inspiration came from many sources: the lace lingerie-clad girls of '80s and '90s anime and PC-98 adult visual novels, the age-old teacher fantasies every boy (including myself) has had and, last but not least, the two Private Tutor Nami hentai mangas that Azumanga Daioh!'s creator wrote and illustrated under the alias of Jonokuchi Jouji. These stories infamously feature a prototype version of Yukari, who is even more youthful and bears a striking resemblance to Misato Katsuragi from Neon Genesis Evangelion, who may have indeed been an inspiration for both characters. Scans of these can be found online, if you know where to look...

As is often the case, I did not use any pose reference for Yukari, though I did look at some poses later on to make adjustments to her thighs and to get the perspective/proportions correct for the lingerie elements. The lace detail is also something I fully improvised on the fly, since I wasn't able to find the kind of anime or visual novel reference images I wanted to copy for this. The only thing I am somewhat regretting is that I, er, did probably go a bit off-model with her body, as she is a lot skinnier canonically and her midriff/torso is more elongated. Unfortunately, I was feeling quite horny when drawing this, so I overlooked these aspects of her. I mean, her tits aren't that big in the show!

I would also like to give very special thanks to my friend Sadarax for helping me with the Japanese writing.

You can get the picture, as well multiple variants (such as Yukari done in the colour scheme of The Very Short Azumanga Daioh! Movie, as well as alternatives with a more basic background and with no background at all), in high-quality working resolution from my deviantART page (hit the 'Free Download' arrow button under the picture to get an archive).

ART: Red for Your Wall

While I do believe that I saw Jessica Rabbit's lounge singer number first back in the early '90s, I did eventually witness most of Tex Avery's Red Hot Riding Hood cartoons just a few years later. Naturally, since I was still a kid at that time, it took me many years before I finally "got" the titillating aspects of both things, and started to appreciate the eroticism.

(Also, I suppose if you needed to add a third girl into the mix, Betty Boop would be the obvious choice)

Red is quite the looker. The quintessential showgirl, she's leggy, has perky tits (but not giant ones like Jessica, since showgirls tend to burn through a lot of calories), wears revealing leotards and has copious amounts of make-up. She is also not an easy character to draw: I would argue that the girl she inspired, Jessica Rabbit, is far easier to nail. Red's face is similar to Gwen Tennyson's from the original Ben 10 series, in that it has shapes that need to be absolutely the right size and positioned in the right places or otherwise, even the slightest misplacement will make it look horribly wrong, and what makes this difficult is that there is very little to aid you in that placement. At least with Hartman designs, you can kind of see or draw lines from the various angles, such as hair spikes, and figure things out that way.

Another thing that gave me a massive headache was Red's body proportions. The first cartoon, Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), has a slightly different construction and design for Red, which is more cartoonish and stretchy, and her head is quite big in that one. The later cartoons would tone down the zaniness and portray Red in a more realistic manner, such as The Shooting of Dan McGoo (1945), where Red's head is considerably smaller. The third short, Swing Shift Cinderella (1945), released later that same year, is a return to a more petite Red with a slightly larger head. As always, I used my old rule of "just pick the design you enjoy the most and base it on that" and went with the SSC variant, which I see as a hybrid between the original and the Dan McGoo one.

In conclusion, I don't know how well this turned out. But hey, the next time I draw her, it should look better.

Go to deviantART here and here for high-resolution versions of all these images, including transparent ones without a background.