Hello!

I am back again with another art piece. This time, I bring to you a character named "V" from the Mystic Messenger mobile game. You will be seeing a lot more characters from that game in my next few posts~ Haha. I really like this piece personally because it reminds me a lot of the more older, retro-style manga artworks I grew up with. I was really influenced with that type of art in my childhood, so looking at my art this way makes me feel proud!

Materials

Mechanical Pencil
Staedtler Eraser
LePen Drawing Pen 0.5
LePen Drawing Pen 0.1
Faber-Castell PITT Artist Pen Black 199

The Process

In the beginning, I always love starting with the face first. After the face shape and structure has been generally sketched out, the eyes are the first thing I like to focus on! They're so much fun. Then I move onto the body so I can get a general feel for the overall pose that I think best fits the picture.

After the face and body pose is all finished, the hair is the most fun for me. I love drawing messy hair strands that overlap and are super flowy and fluffy. The cat ears are just for an extra added "cute" factor, hehe. The clothes are referenced from the game, and although the character "V" normally wears his sunglasses, I couldn't pass up the chance of drawing his eyes!

Now I move onto the inking phase. I use my LePen Drawing Pen 0.5 for the general outline of the body and hair, just getting the basic lines and folds from the clothes. I make sure that there aren't too many hair strands that "go through" each other (you can visibly see hair placed on top or below another hair piece). I also use my Faber-Castell pen to blacken the shadow underneath V's chin. The Drawing Pen 0.1 is used for very, very tiny pen strokes in the eyes for highlight and shading. As you can see, I do not follow my sketch perfectly. Sometimes I adjust my final inking to make sure it looks the best near the end.

Almost at the end now! At this point, I do multiple finishing touches. 1) I finished adding lines to the turtle neck shirt to add more texture, 2) I add highlights to the hair with several brush strokes, 3) I add more varied line strokes by going back to the clothes and filling in dark corners with more ink, 4) I erase all my pencil marks, and 5) I add a background. I did not originally envision a background when I sketched out this picture. The background only came after I finished making "V." Just went with the flow!

Finally, the last step that every artist should do! (Just kidding) I use Instagram filters because I like the extra warm tones from the orange/beige overlay that the app gives.