Tutorials

Part 1

This is where I start for a sketch. The oval for the head was drawn first. From there I draw down, starting with the neck. I start out with an "upside down" triangle for the body, and another for the hips. The arms and legs are drawn starting with a line for bones, which approximate length. Then I use an oval to flesh them out.

The entire figure should be 7 to 8 heads high, as shown. From the bottom, the knee is at 2 heads, hips at 4 heads, waist at 4.5 heads, ribs at 5 heads, shoulders at 5.8 heads, and chin starts at 6 heads.

The distance from the shoulder to the elbow is about the same as that from the shoulder to the waist. The wrist would rest at mid-thigh if the arm was limp. Hands are usually a little smaller than the face.

Elly is a small woman with long legs. Her feet are a little longer than I would normally draw on a woman.

Part 2

At about this time, I wanted some specifics about Elly, so I looked in my reference book, Xenogears Perfect Works. This book rocks. I love it soooooooooooooo much. Of course, I also love the game, so, well... anyway...

I decided to put her in a dress I saw her wearing in the sketches in the book, and I also used it to get her haircut and facial structure.

So this step details the start of her clothing. Right now it's just drawn on around the frame I drew in part 1. The dress has slightly flared sleeves and a split skirt that only comes down to mid-thigh. A belt rests at an angle on her hips, and her boots cover her ankles.

Her hair covers her forehead, and a long strand goes over her ears. Right now her face only has vague details. I put them in to hold the location of her eyes, nose, and mouth. I also put a general sketch of her long hair in.

I changed the body slightly when I got to the clothing. For instance, her shoulders were too broad, so I moved her left one (on our right) back. I also slimmed down her neck, moving the line under her chin a bit to the right.

Part 3

This is when I started cleaning up the picture. I worked from the bottom of the page up, though I probably should have started high. The pictures look much cleaner than the paper did because Photoshop has a wonderful feature called "Adjust Curves" that allows you to fix the contrast in a picture like this.

I erased the lines that wouldn't be seen at this point, like most of the muscle detail on her body. I put more detail into the dress (the collar-piece, for instance), and the boots (those neat circles near her ankles). I adjusted the split around her hips to fit her butt closely, and I started shading.

Her belt isn't done very well, nor is the little flap beneath it. I sort of fudged the sketches around there, because I wasn't sure what they were supposed to be.

Part 4

Now for the bane of my existence as an artist: hands. They're wonderful to work with, but they're hell to actually try to draw. I mentioned this while drawing and the people around me were quick to point out the other things they have problems with: noses, mouths, and feet. There are only a couple of ways to get these right. One is with a picture or a model, if you can draw from a picture or model. I can, but I didn't have Elly around to pose for me, so that didn't help. The other is lots and lots of practice. At some point I'll try to do a hand study in the tutorial. For now, the best thing to do is to notice that the thumb starts at the wrist, and comes out from the rest of the hand. If you're having problems drawing hands, take at look at your own and notice how they move. Wiggle them around a little. Chances are that you're not putting the bones in the right relative positions.

I also finished Elly's face. Her nose is the classic little anime point, her mouth is a straight line, and almost all of the detail comes from her eyes, which are large (of course). Since the face is so small in relation to the body, it's hard to see the details that are put in. There are two ways to deal with this: Put in all the details and have it highly appreciated when people look close (hard with a computer scan) or fudge it. I think I did lots of details, but it would look the same as if I fudged it.

The picture could be done now, but I wanted to add color.

Part 5

Now I've started adding color. I was using colored pencils here, because I like them and because I have a lot. I also sometimes use chalk pastels, oil pastels, and acrylic paints, but none of them would have worked for this picture because it isn't very big (about 6"x14") and it's on 50 lb. paper, not canvasette. I use Prismacolor colored pencils. They're very good quality, blend well, and there's a large variety of colors. They are, however, a bit expensive compare to something like Crayola.

I decided to make the dress green, because it offsets Elly's hair (which is orange). I only had about 3 different shades of green, but as it turns out, that's enough. I used a darker green first, for the shadowy parts of her dress. These were the insides of her sleeves, near her sides, under her arms, etc. I used the other two shades to make a gradient of color. The highlights are near the top, because the light source is from above.

I made the little triangle over her lower abdomen brown because my friend said it reminded her of a piece of leather, and that worked. The little under skirt is a made of the dark green blended a little with the lightest green I was using, to make it a different color from the rest of the dress.

Part 6

The difference between this picture and the one above it is the use of the colorless blender that Prismacolor makes. It is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Check this out:

See the difference? The yellow greens are brought out, and the colors look much more vibrant. I like it very much. It makes the picture look very smooth.

Now, of course, there are a couple of ways to do this if you're using pencils or colored pencils. The colorless blender is, as far as I can tell, a pencil of clear wax. You can also use a white colored pencil, though that tends to give the colors a paler tone. Additionally, you can use a blender to smooth your lines. Blenders are hard to describe--they're little rolls of paper that you can buy at art stores. The work nicely, too.

Final Picture

And this is the final product. Her skin is appropriately pale, her eyes are blue, her hair is very orange, and I think it looks reasonably like Elly.

The top of her dress is supposed to be metallic. Rather, it is metallic gold and copper, but it didn't scan in so well.

I think the piece came out pretty good. There are, of course, a couple of problems. Her hands are a little small, and there are a couple of stray lines on her legs that look weird. Her hair is a little rushed and blurry. The biggest problem that strikes me is that her feet are at the wrong respective places on the floor. Since the left foot (on our right) is further forward by the position of her legs and hips, it should be lower down on the page. For it to be where is, the left foot should be on it's toes, not flat on the ground. Also, her left knee should be more bent than it is.

As it is, it's a very good picture if viewed from the bottom of her hair, up.

- Aurora, of Techstyle Engineers