A new emotion and a new hair-style!

Two days after my first free-style drawing, I came up with the above result (The date at the back of the drawing register as 10.1.12, so 4 days short of a month ago). This was yet another free-style creation but with the aim of departing from the contented faces from before.
I also wanted to alter the hair-style a bit for variety.
Now, I may have mentioned this before, but I definitely couldn’t draw in hair, ears, clothing or a body. Conventional eyes were so-so before I attempted this journey. But even here, the eyes don’t look as they should!

For the hair and the eyes, I was yet again inspired by Sophie-chan. If you look at the eyes closely, you will see the light bubble on the right drawn in Sophie’s style. I added a second light-bubble on the left in my attempt for experimentation.

Now, as regards the hair in this drawing, I tried to use it to convey the overall mood of this character. I drew in long droopy strands of hair trailing a little between the eyes. The eye-brows and eyes and mouth completed the look.

I drew in a flowing curve of hair in an attempt to recreate a style by sophie-chan in one of her tutorial videos. Check the video bellow to see what I mean. In her case, it’s more glamorously done, and she has two wavy curves of hair on both sides of the face whereas I only have one on the right-side (character’s left-side) of the face.

In this video, Sophie used copic markers for blending. At the time of writing this post, I haven’t even gotten into using coloured pencils extensively or any other colouring and so i’m not sure when I’ll be at the level of blending copic markers. That’s a mile post unseen behind some hills; but it’s a mile-post that I’ll pass in time.

Finally, I left the drawing with the face. No neck, no body, no clothes. You will notice that I’ll attempt to draw in those later in the journey. But being a total novice, I didn’t want to take on more than I needed to at this point.

That’s all for now. Next time, I’ll be attempting a new eye-style with a little colour!

Check the road-map to my journey here!

I have started a tumblr blog recently called Ashl3y’s Manga (Ashley being my middle name) where I share my latest manga artwork. So if you’re interested in fast-tracking to where I currently am in the journey, subscribe to that blog. You won’t get any detailed information on what I did to achieve each picture (such as you will find here); I’m waiting till I reach that point here on my manga journey :).

Please leave feed-back! I’d really appreciate your views!

Until next time.

The result was this picture.

First free-style drawing attempted

Instead of more eye practice, I ended up with my first ‘free-style’ manga drawing without copying anyone’s work.

Overall, I was very happy with this. It seems to have a ‘sweet look’ to it.

However, I wasn’t happy with how the eyes turned out as they don’t really sparkle like manga eyes should. But, it seemed like progress was made over the last drawing. At the very least, this was all my own work based on what I learned so far, with no guiding lines used at all.

As you can see, I cheated a little by not drawing any clothing or the rest of the body, just using the hair as a cover of sorts. This was purposeful as I most definitely haven’t gotten to the stage of drawing clothing decently yet.

Hopefully soon, that trend will change!

Join me next time, when I share the results of my efforts to try out a different emotion in my drawing.

I’m a little behind in updating my blog as I started my manga journey at least a few weeks before I wrote my first blog post and so I have a load of pictures sitting around ready to show. So stay tuned and subscribed for the next chapter of the journey.

Until next time,

This drawing was the first full manga face that I attempted.

First ever manga drawing attempted

I got to this stage by following a youtube tutorial by Sophie-Chan step by step. Before attempting the drawing, I watched the video over and over again to get a feel for it first. Although a skilled professional, Sophie-Cha drew in the guiding lines for the benefit of the complete novice like me (I have a link to the tutorial at the end of the post); and it was a real help!

The circles and lines helped place the eyes, the mouth and the chin.

Yes, the video made it look easy — but coming from someone who has done these kind of drawings for a while, it would be.

Time and again, I reached for the rubber and the ruler, I even got something to draw the large circle in! (seeing as I couldn’t do a perfect circle without aid) but, I didn’t give up. I came up with the result above. If you click on the drawing above and magnify it, you can just make out the guiding lines that I drew in.

You will see later in the journey much improved manga pictures (guaranteed – they’re done); but I wouldn’t have got that far without this first step.

Here is the tutorial that helped me. The first thing you will notice is the anime style sound-track behind the video, which i’ve grown to love about her tutorials. The next thing you will notice, is the simplicity of it all. But really, the great thing about this kind of art is that it really is simple in style. Might not seem so at the start, but once you practice, you will definitely get it.

I’m starting to get it……….

I almost forgot to add this tutorial video too. Here, we’ve got a slow drawing using the rules defined in the tutorial above. In fact, I was using this second one the most on my first drawing. Hope you enjoy. Please subscribe to Sophie-Chan’s channel too. There are plenty more videos on there.

I hope this post was helpful to you.

Next time, I will share my second full face drawing. This time, I didn’t copy anything or follow a tutorial. I just did this free-style based on what I picked up to that point.

If you haven’t done so already, subscribe to be ready for the next stage in the journey.

Oh, and please remember, all my drawings are copyrighted to me, all rights reserved. The tutorial embedded here from youtube is copyrighted to Sophie-Chan all rights reserved.

Until next time……

Alas, it took me a few days to make my first drawing. I used the first few days of my journey to literally just look at manga drawings, animes (plenty of those) and online youtube tutorials from accomplished artists in the genre.

This was partly due to my renewing fears of failing and partly the desire to get the rules of drawing manga in my head; so when I watched the anime, looked at the manga drawings and viewed the tutorials with the artists at work, I focused on where the lines were drawn, how the proportions were set out and where the hair hung.

When I finally picked up my pencil, I started with what I considered was the easiest thing to draw ………… the eyes!

And the two eyes bellow were my first of many (both drawn a few weeks ago).

First and Second eye drawings

As you probably can see… the shading seems a bit out, but I considered it a decent first try. At the very least, I made my first step into the world of manga drawing.

I can’t go further without giving due credit to ‘Sophie-Chan’ who’s youtube videos and website inspired and helped me to get this far. Her website had a very simple step by step guide to drawing the eyes which really helped.

Next time, I will share my first full head drawing which I drew by observing one  of Sophie-Chan’s youtube tutorials.

More of my early eye drawings

Subscribe and check back for more!

In the meantime, check out Sophie-Chan’s work and be inspired!

Until next time….

Try as I might, I could never get my pictures right. It would either be a problem with the eyes, the ears, the hair, or the proportions. Add to that, shaking hands would mess up the work. So, unsurprisingly, it was years before I tried again.

But this time, instead of conventional art, i’m going down the manga route; and this time, instead of figuring it all out on my own… i’m going to observe the established artists, watch their youtube tutorials, buy their books, and then implement the rules of the game.

At the time of writing this first post, i’ve already done a few pictures which i will showcase in order of time in this blog. My first ever manga picture though, was only completed in the beginning of this month (January 2012).

This blog is my journey. You’re welcome to read along as I try to pick up on what I learn. The truth be told, I never thought i’d try to draw again. I guess it’s my interest in manga that’s giving me the enthusiasm to try again. Perhaps, this blog will help you too.