Hunting the Elusive

duca/ELK released beautiful vanity in October 2009. It is a Touhou fanbook and fairly thin at 16 pages, though it is actually pretty much made up of page spreads. The reason I chose to buy and review beautiful vanity is due to the slightly unusual character style that duca/ELK has, as well as the use of texture and the way the lines are rendered in the art. Given these subtleties, I think it is worth keeping an eye on this artist, and I am looking forward to some great things coming out from this illustrator. [Release] [PNG]

beautiful vanity starts with the conventional choice of using Reimu Hakurei on the cover, and of course, the cover is a spread illustration. We note straight away the character style, with the rather vertically elongated eyes with pronounced lower eyelashes, a very subtle nose (its presence only really betrayed by the shading), the relatively low positioning of the mouth, as well as the sharp chin.

Limbs and fingers are also elongated, and duca/ELK has chosen in this cover illustration to utilise quite liberally a number of textures, including the black and white checker pattern so favoured by BRS, and pain splatter, in addition to some other grunge type texture.

The paint splatter texture is shared here in the first illustration within the book.

And it is also used in the next illustration, although the nice coloured butterfly brush stamps really draw the eye, as does the dynamism of the picture, which is presumably during an attack sequence.

The next illustration in beautiful vanity seems to be a character study of Patchouli, er…once again with the splash texture, and enhanced with some 3D hexagon prisms. I love the colours and the more subtle textures.

The style changes somewhat with this one of Rin Kaenbyou, with overall a slightly harsher look, bolder colours and the black strokes giving the illustration a highly contrasty feel.

This next spread departs quite a bit from the previous illustrations (except the bikini bottom, which is really similar in style to the last one we looked at). The character expression is also quite…different.

At this point, duca/ELK seems to be playing with style, with this next one using subtler and lighter colours. I will note the very nice touch of using a starry sky texture, which really differentiates itself in the black sections, especially for Marisa. I also note the lens flare effect on the upper right hand corner.

The last illustration is that of Utsuho Reiuji which suitably has the nuclear warning label on it (Subterranean Animism reference). I quite like this illustration for whatever reason, possibly due to the “flame” effects and the expression on her face.