Last year, I had a miscalculation on my 25th anime anniversary. I was able to recall that I started being an anime lover while enjoying my summer vacation way back 1997. Despite the miscalculation, I still pushed through my simple 25th anniversary celebration by drawing a dedication for my boyfriend who is also an anime lover. I came up with the idea of drawing Zoro from the anime, One Piece since my boyfriend is a big fan of him. I'm also a Zoro fan and I love muscles so I enjoyed drawing him a lot. I decided to make a traditional drawing since I'm not used to digital art that time. This is both my dedication and my birthday present for him last year.
I've been sending him the progress of my work and it's a good thing since I was able to retrieve some photos that show the process of this traditional drawing.
SKETCH
This is the only photo I have for the sketch. Too bad I already erased all my guide lines in this photo. I use guide lines to achieve the right proportions. I erase them once I'm done sketching to avoid confusion with all the lines overlapping the details. I do sketching very lightly so the drawing is still neat when I erase the pencil drawing once I'm done with the inking process.
INKING
Inking is the next step once the sketching is done. I used a sign pen for this one. When I showed this to my boyfriend, he loved it already so he requested me to put it in a frame once I'm done coloring it. As you can see in the photo, I found a frame that suits the drawing.
REPLACING THE PAPER
I wasn't expecting my boyfriend to request for framing that's why I only used bond paper for this drawing. Good thing a friend who is also a fellow artist shared an online shop where I can buy the best vellum drawing board paper for traditional drawings. I bought one then I transferred my drawing there.
IMPROVISED CARBON PAPER
Aside from helping me with the art materials, my friend also gave me the idea to transfer the drawing to the vellum board paper by tracing my work so I don't need to draw everything from scratch now that my lineart is final with the right proportions. The photo above is the idea that he shared to me. We know that carbon paper is very messy and I might have a problem erasing its residues so I improvised it by shading a huge portion of a bond paper with pencil. After that, I used it the same way a carbon paper is used. It's very effective.
This is the result of the advice I took from my friend. It's not messy and it makes the residues easy to erase. The photo shows how clean it is.
FINAL INKING
I did the inking again for a clean lineart before erasing the pencil. I came up with the idea of putting a dragon silhouette at the background because I'm sure that it will be good enough to match a badass character like Zoro. I didn't use sign pen on it. The pencil will just be a guide when I proceed with the coloring process.
COLORING
This is how the dragon turned out. I just followed the form I made using pencil then I put all the details using colored pencils. I start with the base colors then I blend 1-2 more colors for the shading. I start coloring from the outermost part which is the background, followed by the clothes and hair. The skin is the last thing I color so I can clean up the residues that the colored pencils left. I erase them all before I start coloring the skin for a clean result.
THE FINAL RESULT
As promised, I granted my boyfriend's wish. I sent him a birthday greeting with this drawing. He's very happy with the result. He wants to have it displayed. The frame suits the drawing too. Everything went well according to the concept. For additional tip, you can use a tissue for the final touch. I do that to smoothen the texture of the colored pencils. Drawing for other people, especially for someone you love dearly makes the task more enjoyable plus I enjoy drawing muscles a lot hahaha. I displayed this drawing in the apartment where I currently stay.