Sketchbook Chapter 20: Tribal Silence

Hello, dear creative community!♥️
In this new chapter, i bring you another new creature, this time a little melancholic and dark. I didn't have a specific name for her or him... Since it gives me different vibes, but while i was looking for inspiration, images of indigenous people appeared, and i'm always drawn to their tribal tattoos, so the creature on this new page began like this:

As i looked at the photo of an Asian boy, whose facial features were very pronounced and striking, with a very square face and slanted eyes, i began to sketch the head of my creature. I wasn't trying to make a portrait of the boy i saw in the photos because that's not my thing; i just wanted to create the basis for this drawing. As for the background, i wasn't sure what i wanted to do, so i focused more on creating details for my main figure.

This time, before choosing bases and colors for my drawing, i decided to outline the entire figure with my calibrated black ink pens. I left the small background lines for last, as i wasn't sure whether to keep them or add other details.

As always, i love creatures with unusual skin, because they are supposed to be non-human. For the base of my creature, i used two shades of gray, one warm and one cool. Although i admit that the grays in these Chinese markers are a bit strange. I never know exactly how it will turn out, i just go with the flow and gradually add other shades to achieve that strange, alien skin. I try not to panic like i used to. For the final touches on the skin, i used two pastel colors, one yellow and one turquoise. I liked that it turned a little bronze and looked interesting.

Something i noticed immediately after finishing painting the skin was that a vibrant red background would be perfect. Although i used a coral red alcohol marker, i loved how it highlighted my weird creature with its depressing face.

I don't know why, but from the beginning, i wanted to add these touches of red spots, like tears of blood, and although i thought about not adding them, in the end i did because i'm supposed to do whatever comes up without planning things so much. In the end, i decided to leave the background lines pattern and darken some areas to add a little more drama, since the main figure already had enough details. I added some highlights with a white acrylic marker.

I admit that for a moment i thought i wouldn't like the result, because while i was drawing this creature, i had many doubts and my mind was in a kind of struggle between tiredness, a strange boredom, things i have pending, worries that are not mine, my back pain, and my commitment to finish this mini art book, as well as the anxiety of running out of ideas or sometimes becoming demotivated for no reason during the process.

When i analyze this creature a little, i can see why it has that face and so many things stuck in its head 😅. I love how, through drawing, we can channel our mental and emotional disasters and turn them into art. That's why, for a long time, i didn't want anyone to see my drawings, because i felt that, in a way, they would see me naked, and i didn't want that. Now i'm okay with it; it's therapeutic at times. And that's how my creature from chapter 20 turned out.