Zanmu

I love how both Yuuma and Chiyari have very clearly pointed and long ears in ZUN's art in Touhou 19 (especially Chiyari, like dang look at those)

I think theyre the first characters to very clearly have pointed elf-like ears in ZUN's art and i think thats cool

You may be saying what about Parsee or Nue, but i think its harder to tell if those were intentional or not? Correct me if i missed something, but i think SA was the first game where ZUN actually drew human ears on some of the characters instead of just hiding them behind hair, with Parsee being the first to have them And if you look at art of other characters from around SA to TD, pretty much everyone has those kinda weirdly shaped, vaguely pointy looking ears (realizing i have way more to say after seeing that SA was the first game where he drew ears on the characters so uh sorry lol) At first i thought Parsee having pointy ears wasnt something intentional but just something that got picked up by fans and then made its way into official art (and i get it cause pointy ears are cool looking) but with Parsee specifically being THE first character that ZUN bothered to draw ears for, im starting to wonder if it mightve been intentional, like, he imagined her with a sort of elf-like appearance, realized he had to draw ears for that, and then just continued doing it for some of the other characters (sort of like how i think ZUN ended up changing the very pale yellow he usually used for skintones until touhou 17 and onwards where it changed but thats for another post im already rambling so much) much to think about.

but anyways Unfinished Dream of All Living Ghost has some of ZUN's best art i think everyone looks great

love this new touhou

So happy she's in the new game

NEW TOUHOU ANNOUNCED NEW TOUHOU ANNOUNCED NEW TOUHOU ANNOUNCED

THIS IS NOT A DRILL

Touhou 19 is gonna be a Phantasmagoria-style game! the latest since Touhou 9 in 2005!

Demo in May, full game expected this summer

cat in the lap

Ran in Touhou 19 be like

I swear to god, Zanmu has just been on my mind recently, she's taking over my fucking brain please send help

Artist's Note:

Why is it that everytime I do a drawing of Zanmu I always make the canvas size fucking huge and it ends up being a living nightmare to fucking export. I swear to god I had to go from 1200 DPI to 600 to 350.

Exporting hell aside, I loved working on this piece. With Zanmu's design, I wanted to combine all the design details that I love and have seen in other people's drawings of Zanmu and give them my own personal touches. First of all, her sleeves were inspired by @amemenojaku's design for Zanmu, and I absolutley love that detail because not only does it make her feel more regal, it also can be a callback to Satori and old hell, and also gives me the idea that Satori's fashion sense was inspired by Zanmu because IRL a lot of historical fashion was inspired by what the nobles were wearing at the time, and since Satori was around since when Old Hell used to be Hell, she probably took some wardrobe inspo from her (or it could be my headcanon that Satori could've been Zanmu's royal advisor or she was in her court or something but that theory is kinda grasping at strings from other headcanons I have, but that's for a different post). Also, the eye makeup she has was inspired by @jothelion's drawings of Zanmu, and like, I fucking love that detail because it just adds so much like omg I just love it sm.

And now for the design details I put in. I gave Zanmu tassel earrings because I think they'd look great on her. I also really like to exaggerate her hair and really try to make it look wild, as well as having little grey hairs here and there. I also try to add some wrinkles to the corners of her eyes, but TBH I don't know how visible that detail is, since the image is pretty fucking big. I also really exaggerated the tassles/strings on her outfit, since I really wanted to play around with the potential flow they could have. Also, big fan of giving Zanmu longer sleeves and pants. IDK why but I just like how it flows better. Also big fan of making her taller, idk why a lot of fanart makes her short. Also, I placed her horns closer to the front of her head as I just think placing horns in that position looks cool.

Also, if you're wondering about the halo, I took some inspiration from a few of Caravaggio's paintings where he often depicts saints with this very thin halo around the top of their heads. I just liked that detail a lot so I thought I'd include it.

Fun fact, I was originally gonna make the four skeletons Chiyari, Biten, Enoko, and Hisami but I didn't like the prospect of having to draw four more characters, so I chose to replace them with skeletons (if you wanna get silly with it, Zanmu got Hisami to kidnap Aya, set up some skeletons with bones from her bone collection and told her to take a picture of her).

I kinda gave up on Zanmu's feet and the one skeleton's hands (as if drawing hands normally is hard enough but NOPE, HAD TO MAKE IT LIVING HELL FOR MYSELF BY MAKING IT A SKELETON) and the quality of the image may suffer because of how much I had to fucking compress it (Zanmu's presence alone was enough to make the computer lose all of it's desire and motivation to export the drawing of her lmao), but I have been hacking at this piece for a while now, plus I need to learn when to call it quits when it comes to drawings). Also as I was fixing up the hands there was one spot where I forgot to clean up with the sketch and I can't fucking unsee that now and it's going to fucking bother me until I fix it but fixing it requires going back and putting my computer through hell so yeah.

So yeah, that's about all I have to say with this drawing, it was fun but also a nightmare lol

:3

:3 :3 :3

Zanmu !!!!!

Want to hear more about it? ✨

When Sanae made friends with Son Biten or... something!