The Boy Who Loves Capes

This sketch came while I was at the library with my cousin and her daughter. I happened to bring a drawing pad and started sketching away. As always, I had no direction; just drawing. I only knew I was drawing a cute, youthful girl.  Or so I thought. For about a week I wrestled with the sketch, standing before the mirror trying to figure out why it wasn't working the way I liked. I continued to go over and over the drawing until I realized that it wasn't a female character, it was a male. A spunky boy who needed a smirk and a high-collared cape.

Red-head was the first thing I decided.  He was spunky, right.  Green eyes followed.  The rest I inked away.  I tried to make a big–but not too dramatic–bejeweled collar.  Don't know if I got it right, but I remove all kinds of pressure when drawing.  Just let it flow.

I had black, textured felt in mind to make up the collar.  So after I water-colored his hair orange, and shaded his eyes, I x-acto knifed the collar portion. 

I initially wanted to water-color the background a deep red, saw this scrapbooking piece in a bag (the black-fading-into-red goth boutique look), and changed my mind.  The trick was cutting around the outline of the collar, as I went about removing the negative space to fit in his backdrop.  I still needed the shape of the collar as a guide, but thought I eventually could cut out the outline...  

...But I kept it, coloring his collar's outline the same red as the cape.  Having that outline of red just seemed to make it all pop just right.  As you can see, it was all messy; so much so that I put a blank piece of paper underneath him to color everything with abandon.  Nonetheless, once the water color dried, I laid a basic orange and red chalk pastel color to his hair and cape (once again, I love layers).  As for his skin-tone–a light flesh color.  He looks so English schoolboy here. 

With all the screen and felt glued in place, I finally went about adding streaks to his hair with Prismacolor pencils.

Fill in the pupils; highlight the hair. This is actually the last shot from my camera, as opposed to a scanned form. I liked the scan version, but felt like my scanner was so small that I was losing lots of areas of the character. The jewels on his collar were cut out, as well as the cape's brooch. I did the same digital revive and retouch (or what I could, considering I'm nowhere near an expert) and added accents to the eyes so they glowed.  Now, there may be an issue with lighting between the two versions, but the darker tint of the camera's shot kind of works with the theme. 

Not in the strictest sense, but he seems Korean to me now. 

In its entirety, the drawing has this whimsicalness to it that I love. A cool kid who likes bejeweled capes with high collars; learning toward vampirism and goth, but severely unlike either.

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