Hello everyone!
If you read my ‘About’ page, you might know that I really like to draw things. Also, I like to play video games. If only there were a way to combine these two things… Ow, wait! There is!
For this drawing, I tried to recreate the pokémon Pikachu! This probably won’t be the last pokémon I will be creating. I’m not 100% content with my work, but oh well. I’ll take you through some quick steps in my creative progress. I hope you like it! Let me know what you think :).
So, first of all, I looked up some references as to how Pikachu looks. Pikachu isn’t the least known character, so I was fine on that regard. Then I started sketching him with my pencil. After a lot of erasing and redrawing, I kind of got the proportions right. After that, I started to overline the important lines with my 0.4mm fine liner. This process can be seen below.
To finish the linework, I erased the leftover pencil lines to make it look clean again.
After completing the linework, I started adding some colour. I wanted to create the feeling that there was light coming from a direction. So shadows and reflection were really important while doing this. I started out by picking the right colours and trying them on another sheet of paper to get a feel of how it would look. After finally deciding what colours I would use, I started out by adding a base layer of yellow (on the places necessary). Then I took a darker yellow, and a black to blend toward the darker side of Pikachu. Right after that, I added some dark patched to function as ‘shadow’. Finally, I erased some yellow to get the feel of illumination.
The yellow parts were finished now, so I started on the eyes and the cheeks. The cheeks were just an easy grading from red to white. To create a reflection in the eyes, I added some white spots in them. I finished the colouring by making the top of Pikachu’s ears(?) black with yet again a grading. The coloured in Pikachu can be seen below!
I actually kind of liked it, but felt like it was kind of ’empty’. I just simply felt like it was lacking something. I started thinking about Pikachu and what I could add. If you know this pokémon, you probably think of the same thing right now that I thought of at that moment; ‘lightning’!
I thought about making 3D lightning, but I decided against it. I actually liked my Pikachu, and adding 3D lightning would mean I had to let it come around Pikachu, therefore erasing some of the colourings I did. So, instead, I decided to just add some flat lightning around his head, his ears and his tail. I started out with lining out the lightning.
As we all know, lightning is really, really bright. Because of this, I wanted to make it seem like the lightning was emitting light. To do this, I picked different shades of blue. I tried putting lighter shades of blue close around the lightning while putting darker shades of blue further away from the lighting. Then I tried to blend to different shades of blue a bit. Finally, I coloured the lighting in very loosely.
Below you can see the final result! I like the Pikachu, but I’m not 100% happy with the lightning. All in all, I think it worked out nicely!
I hope you liked the drawing and reading the post! Let me know what you think :).
Treatey out
It looks really great!
I understand that you are not completely happy with the lightning background, as it seems to take away some of the “polished” feeling that the rest of the drawing emits. However, I am of the opinion that you should be happy, as the background *does* really fit the drawing, and gives it a bit more character.
Overall, great work!
Thank you for your feedback! I’m glad you like it! 🙂