Annabeth Process

This was initially a marker practice drawring gone really, really well.

Since I've drawn my first set of the Scarf Series I've noticed that my marker work is really lacking something. As of late I've been looking at a lot of marker tutorials to see what I could find. I noticed the work that used a lot more color looked more attractive than using just a base color and different shades of the base.

So I sketched up a bust of Annabeth from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book series because she's one of my faves. I sketched it in my Strathmore sketchbook and scanned it in. The sketch itself is only about 5 1/2 inches long so it's pretty tiny.

I inked the sketch with a .03 black Micron and a .01 black Micron for the finer details. I waited for the ink to dry, then erased my lines. I scanned in the image again. I cleaned up the sketch a tad in Photoshop using this tutorial which has been insanely helpful! I decided that the sketch was a little too small for me to work with for practice, so instead of coloring the original I decided to print out a copy. I had recently gotten some Matte paper to print off some of my work and stick it in my portfolio so I tried that first. Yeah, don't use Matte paper. The colors did not blend well at all. I didn't really want to print it on regular printer paper because the markers bleed quite a bit. I decided to rip out a piece of my Aquabee Manga paper (which is recommended for Copics ^^) and stick that in the printer. Though it took a really long time for the ink to dry, it worked really, really well.

I switched up my method a bit with coloring. I had read in a random tutorial (I'm sorry, I don't have the link) that if you don't leave a little bit of white left on the skin your image will look flat and boring. Instead of coloring the base color over the entire face like I usually do, I started by just shading in the shadows with the base color (Copic: skin white) and moved in from there. Fortunately you can't really tell, but the printer ink smeared a little bit. It actually worked well and gave the skin a little bit darker tone for some of the shadows. After I finished with the base color, I layered with a darker shade. From there I used a darker layer for the really dark shadows. I decided to use a lighter shade of purple for the really deep shades. After I finished I used the base color again to blend the color a bit better.

Her hair was just plain fun. I first laid down a really light yellow base (it was either Prisma: deco yellow or blondewood) and I went from there. Her hair has so many colors in it. There's goldenrod, light blue, lilac, sienna brown, deco pink, and even some fuchsia! Again, to blend the colors I used a lighter yellow. I felt so happy using so many colors that I would have never thought to use in hair and having it turn out so well! I got lucky!

Speaking of luck, I was lucky enough to find this amazing colorless blender tutorial. Let me tell you, it actually works. I used it for her eyes. I first took a light grey and applied the colorless blender ink to it, making a nice soft gradient. I used a few more greys just for some depth, and I used my darkest gray as the outline and the little dab in the middle. I would have never guessed that that was how you used a colorless blender and I'm so glad I found the tutorial! I think I would have benefited more if I added a little bit more depth in the eyes, but I ran out of greys ^^.

The shirt has a base layer of yellow orange. Like her hair, there's a ton of colors in here too. I used the colorless blender some with her shirt and it worked out really nice.

After her shirt I moved on to her lips. I actually used a Photoshop tutorial as reference for them. My scanner definitely took away some of the color, but it still looks nice scanned in. Deco pink was used the most for the lips. Sienna brown and lilac were the deepest shades. Blush pink and pink are in there as well. I blended the colors with the deco pink base color.

The accents were the most fun. I used the colorless blender on the deco pink and added blush along her cheeks, chin, and nose to give her a little bit more feminine color. Then I took my wonderful white gel pen and applied shine to her lips and eyes. I used dots for her cheeks, nose, and if you can see, her upper ear. I decided to highlight her jawline and add a few dabs to her eyelids/lashes. Instead of the normal squiggle hairshine I apply with the white gel pen, I used strokes as highlights. I admit, I got the idea from using highlights in Photoshop. I'm actually a strong believer that using what you learn in Photoshop can be applied to your traditional work as well. You just don't have the handy dandy "undo" button ^^.

From start to finish, this piece took me about 3 hours. I'm pretty sure that's the longest I've ever spent on a traditional piece of work. I really think it paid off quite a bit! Expect to see more traditional work like this from me! :]

You can see just the finished piece here!