Old XJ-9 Work In Progress 🌟

        I have all of my old blog posts privated. Here's some old WIP photos I did of XJ-9, AKA Jenny Wakemen from My Life As a Teenage Robot. I just noticed that this is about the second time that I mentioned her on my blog. I'll use this old WIP to explain my drawing process. I'll probably release a tutorial or another WIP that's up-to-date some time in the future.

🌟Rough Sketch🌟 

        I am using my Wacom Bamboo art tablet and the software I am using is called Fire Alpaca. At the time I was using a Windows 7 Lenovo computer. Fire Alpaca is a great free drawing tool. It can be downloaded HERE. I may also upload my Top 10 free art programs and softwares blog post. I'm super cheap so I tend to make the best out of what I have, and my best comes out great! Anyways, I start out by making super general and bare-minimum shapes that composes the character's basic shape. From there I add a bit more detail and make it look more like the character, still maintaining that sketchy unpolished look to it. When that is done I ended up with the image that I have here. Random fun fact, I'm pretty bad at perspective. I wanted to have Jenny jumping or flying in the air and Brad and Tuck would be waving to her. They were suppose to be the two little stick figures on the ground.
         I don't have any photos of this, but when I am done with the sketch I lower down the opacity on the sketch layer, create a new layer for line art, lower down the sensitivity/resistance of the brush, and outline the character to create line art.

🌟Line Art, Colour, Shading🌟

 

         I know I took a massive jump. but I didn't have much screenshots apart from these. Once I complete the line art, I save the image as a PNG and import it into Gimp. Gimp is also a free software which is more for editing photos. It's a great alternative to Adobe Photoshop. If you want to do graphic design, drawings, or photo editing, Gimp is a great software to get your feet wet. It can be downloaded HERE.
        This is where I added some color, some shine, and some shading. For shading I believe I used both a combination of a soft brush with a low black opacity (Which is apparently a no-no when it comes to shading) but in this case I feel like it worked great. Drew and coloured a background, used a preset brush to create some clouds, and then I get the finished product as shown below.

🌟Finished Product🌟

 

        Once I added the background, voilà, that's it! The signature on the bottom right is old. Believe it or not I don't really have a signature that I would consider permanent. However, most of my signatures do have that box with the letter "N" in it.  From what I remember, this drawing took about 2 days and about 2-4 hours each day. Over all I was pretty happy with the drawing ✨

Some of my problems with drawing 🌟

        A lot of the time when you are starting out with art, it's not easy. There's so many different steps to learn. You need to draw basic shapes, draw those shapes at different angles, color theory etc. Then there's drawing a human body. When drawing a human, it's essentially the same thing except you are taking those basic shapes and morphing them a little bit to resemble a human body part.

        Example, when drawing the human body, it's really just a series of cylinders, circles, and cubes/squares. Once you get the basic shapes down, you just add more details, which is essentially just adding curvy or straight lines! Or at least that's the simple way of saying it. Quick tip, if you want to get started with drawing, don't draw anime characters first. Don't get me wrong, it's a good way to get your feet wet with drawing. When I started drawing I mainly drew the Power Puff Girls and other cartoon characters.
        However, this isn't a great way to start. You may want to start out learning the fundamentals such as human anatomy and general realism. Once you get the basics and fundamentals down, it would be easier to skew around the proportions and draw as many cartoony or anime-styled things you want! You would also learn how to stay on-model so your character's don't look off.

        With that being said, I can't draw men to save my life. I've always had fun with drawing women. To me they were more fun to draw because of all the fun curves and clothes you can dress your character up in. When I draw guys, it's usually a very basic frame/figure and there's really only a couple things that guys can wear. 

        Especially considering doll characters (Which were always a treat for me to see when I was younger!) There was just so many different variations of things to give the female characters! One example is Monster High characters or Novi Stars characters.

        If you've seen my Deviant Art, it's really just female characters I have on there, with the exception of a couple cartoon characters I'm already familiar with like Cosmo or Steven Universe and some OCs.
I'll get better however. I will achieve my dream of creating a comic! My only problem is though, should it be printed, or should it be a web comic? 🤔 Maybe I'll address that in another blog post!

Thanks for reading everyone! ✨

Image Sources:
https://openlab.citytech.cuny.edu/woolley-comd1231fa17/2017/09/11/volumetric-drawing/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/41020179@N07/7398716988
https://www.deviantart.com/figyalova/art/Monster-High-Ghouls-605476357