NARUTO - Kazekage KENZAN

EDIT #2 - Agh, final edit I SWEAR. I realized I forgot to include those belt buckle thingies on Gaara's costume so I had to throw those in on Photoshop. Next thing I knew I was fiddling around with the portrait again...

I now have to physically restrain myself from going back in to fix my nit picks. See this is what happens when you work on something for too long!

=============

EDIT - Had to fix up the portrait a lil more, and now I'm about 20% happier with the result. I need to take a break from this LOL.

=============

I had this sketch since last year but didn't get around to finishing it off until tonight. I was toying with the idea of Gaara growing back his eyebrows and his eye rings lightening up a bit. Figure at this point in the story at least gets his 8 hours right? Or more to make up for his lack of Zzz-s.

I was doin the whole speedpainting schtick on this until I noticed I had noodled away on this until 4am. Time flies O_O. By the time I finished the face I had absolutely no idea what to do about the rest, I thought it'd be a shame to waste all that negative space and began making big strokes everywhere on the canvas. I wanted it to look like Gaara was materializing/disintegrating with the sand.

I'll probably rework this a tad when summer con season rolls around.

[PS: rough translation of Kazekage kenzan = "enter the kazekage", got the idea for the name from some old sentai show I saw when I was a kid]

[PPS: I'm not a huge Naruto fanatic per se although I do dig Kishimoto's simplistic drawing sensibilities. That spoiler on chapter 392 made me roll my eyes, I feel like I'm reading newspaper cartoons again for some strange reason LOL. Sigh. I wonder when Naruto himself actually gets some page time, anyone wanna take bets? Here's the poll: [link] ]