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Old pictures I've drawn of Koishi🎔

I first discovered Touhou Project around the ages of 11-12 years old, and I immediately gravitated towards Koishi the moment I saw her. I remember reading her official profile, feeling as if it was remarkable different compared to other characters', and I even remember the very day her wiki page was updated with the release of Hopeless Masquerade! Needless to say, I soon started playing the new game, drawing her, listening to her musical themes, and even got my first extra clear!
There are a LOT of pictures I drew of Koishi as a child, and I have no intention of uploading them here for two reasons. Firstly, I am trying to conserve as much space as possible. Secondly, some of these pictures are just terrifying...During my early highschool years, my art went through a really drastic learning period and I genuinely think my my art in middle school had more appeal, even if I was learning some important things. You can view all the images on this tumblr post here. For some of these pieces, I can only estimate my age or school grade.

Early Middle School🎔

The first image was likely the very first picture of Koishi that I've ever drawn, and I can confirm my age to be 12 years old because I drew it for Mother's Day and my mother took a picture of it on her phone. Why do I think it's the first time I've drawn Koishi? It's for a really peculiar reason: if you look closely at the image and compare it to others, you can see that I didn't really grasp how the heart-shaped circle loop of Koishi's third eye worked. Instead of drawing it as a circular loop, I drew it with a sharp diagonal bend, and the end point of the cords aren't even overlapping! Anyways, this picture is supposed to be Koishi during her spellcard, Subterranean Rose.
You'll notice in the fourth image, Koishi's hat has fallen off. During childhood--and even sometimes now--I struggled with drawing her hat, especially in perspective. If you zoom in you can actually see the erased lines of the hat that drew over and over again, trying to get it right and failing every time. The other images are some pretty generic "anime girl standing in white void with a smile" but I still think they're pretty cute. You might also notice that I gave Koishi heart-shaped pupils and remained pretty insistent on this before giving it up entirely; I really like fanart of Koishi with heart-shaped eyes since it gives her a more unique face compared to other characters, but I guess I just got bored of doing it every single time.

Late Middle School/Early High School🎔

This is the point where my art starts looking really, really weird and messed up. At this age, I became really self-conscious of my art and started listening to other artists talk about issues, like same face syndrome, anatomy issues, 'realistic' body types, etc, etc. In particular I started drawing anime girls with REALLY fucked up noses, something I don't even remotely care about anymore. These days, I think one of the worst mistakes beginner artists end up making is focusing intently on these small issues--things that don't really impact your art in the grand scheme of things. You shouldn't worry about drawing anime girls with 'realistic noses' when you can't even draw a box in perspective! Anyways, my favorite piece from this time period is the first one, my attempt at drawing Koishi's spellcards from the game Double Spoiler. The blue roses, red orbs, and blue orbs are meant to be her spellcard Rose Hell, the vines and diamond shaped danmaku are supposed to be Embyro's Dream, and the blue and pink hearts are meant to be Selfless Love and DNA's Flaw.

The third image was drawn after the release of ULiL, where I saw Koishi's new design and wanted to make some adjustments to how I typically draw her. One of those images is drawn with crayon (no idea why) and yes, that one particular image is horrifying and looks like she has the face of a horse...If I can say one positive thing about this time period, it was that I was actively trying to get better at drawing and that it ended up paying off in the end. I wouldn't shy away from trying to draw more harder or complicated subjects like hands, and I would go out of my way to look up references and watch tutorials should the need arise. Another point was that this time period was the last time I really bothered with coloring my traditional art; I had a lot of family members buying me colored pencils for the holidays, but I never really used them because most of the time I drew in school where I didn't want to lug a whole bunch of pencils with me. Another reason was my mental state massively declined in later years and I think my art ended up becoming less colorful and energetic as a result...Like you might imagine, this later gave me a lot of problems as an adult, struggling with learning color theory.

Late High School🎔

Besides color, everything massively improved during this time period. My strokes and linework became much more fluid, gentle, and less rigid when conveying a sense of motion. Since I spent most of my time drawing bonnet-wearing Touhou characters, I intuitively picked up how to draw fabric, ruffles, and frills. You'll also noticed I started experimenting with more interesting shapes and form, making Koishi's hair a lot less generic and making it much more fluffy! (As it should be.) Another small but noticeable change was that I started considering the light source and values in my drawings, although it was at a very basic level. Some things I like during this time period was that I included a lot of varied facial expressions. I really like the piece where Koishi's third eye has been cleaved in half, and she is turning around to look at it somewhat hesitantly.
I'm planning on redrawing the image of her with the bouquet; it was supposed to be a very dark scene where the light is pouring in behind her from the stained glass window. At this point in my life, I wasn't seriously studying art in any capacity, nor was I grinding fundamentals, but I think my art showed a lot of potential.

Early Adulthood🎔

There's only two pictures here, unfortunately, since I sort of lost the ability to draw during this time. The first picture is one I drew at work, and it's a pretty obvious decline in quality compared to my previous work. This was during the worst period of my life--unable to eat, constantly bruised and in pain, planning my suicide and hearing things that weren't real, etc, etc--and you can just look at the Koishi here and sense that something is wrong. The second image happened later, after I finally quit my horrific job. You can see my work immediately bounce back and become so much more expressive and full of personality. At this point I was starting to draw Koishi in a way that mirrors how I draw her now, nailing down the aspects of her design that I find most appealing: her over-sized sleeves, fluffy hair, sharp shapes, distorted third eye cords, etc.
There was a lot more I drew, but it was primarily digital and not traditional any longer! I usually don't bother backing up my digital art, and these days I only draw traditional when I'm practicing or studying something. Sometime in the future I'll have a very long post dedicated to how I love Koishi's design as well as drawing her, but for now I just wanted to take a look at some of my older work. I'm pretty happy with my work these days when I consider how surprised child-me would be if I could somehow travel back in time and show her!

Bonus Image!🎔

The last image was a somewhat recent drawing by me, but NOT colored! My grandmother with dementia colored it for me. Not many people can say that. Please send thoughts and prayers to my grandmother someone keeps breaking into her apartment and stealing her hearing aid!!