German lady in a dress circa 1890
Written by Teresita Blanco (The Artsy Sister)
Here is another one of my pretty maidens drawing. I am always trying new stuff to improve the final product. As you may have noticed, I am a bit of a mixed media kind of person. Well, those who have been reading enough of my work know that I just repeated myself. Then again, there is only so much one can say about the matter. I am always coming up with new things to rant about. It might be a bit more useful if I had some professional drawing training. I was going to enter Art school, but at the time I needed something resembling a portfolio. I was in high school and I had a choice of two AP classes. I stupidly chose psychology, instead of studio design. The studio class would have been useful for building a portfolio. As for the psychology, as soon as I got a bad grade I got out. I wanted to maintain a good GPA. I ended up doing Journalism, and then the rest is history.
As far as art is concerned, I only studied its history, not the technique behind it. I was always a learn as you do type of person. This drawing was done based on what I learned making my anime line arts. With my anime line arts, I would first draw it with a pencil, and then I would trace over the pencil with my art pens. Most people tend to do both via stages. However, I did not have the budget to do it like other mangaka artist. This is part of the reason why I develop perfect line arts. My brother then does the special effects and the shading on the computer. With a perfect line art, we can edit the manga and redo it, as often as necessary. If you do everything on a single page, a minor mistake just ruins the entire process. Then, you have to start from scratch again.
Since I was a mangaka artist on a shoe strong budget most of my life, I always picked up tricks for saving money. One thing I used to do was buy a medium width Strathmore paper. I then would do the line arts on both sides of the paper. Medium level paper keeps the pens from bleeding into the other side. Drawing on both sides of the paper work dandy. I no longer need to do so, but I still prefer it. It saves on storage space to draw on both sides of the paper. I am not able to do so with my pencil drawings. The leda art supply paper tends to bleed through when I add the pens. It is nothing too terrible. The notebooks are really cheap, and it takes color rather nicely. I am still using the same set I bought. As of now, I am mostly showing you my old drawings. I have not done any new pretty dresses.
I am currently working on my new comic. It is just going to be a 3 volume deal. It is one of those itches you have to scratch. Once I complete it. I will take on more serious projects. When I say serious projects, I do not mean that I will develop a serious manga. I have always had a bit of a funny bone. It shows more in my comics than in my actual writing. I guess you can say I am a bit more of a visual comedian. Most people who read my comics find it hilarious, but at the end, they do not know what to make of it. Our longest project we have been at it since high school. It has been a slow process, and now 8 years later, we only have 8 volumes. I suppose it cannot be helped. One can only do so much by one’s lonesome. Most people manage to develop longer projects because they have an entire team devoted to a single comic. Well, there is no point in overthinking it. The paper used for this drawing is from Leda Art supply. The skin color was drawn with a coloring pencil and a Morris Bamboo pen. The other pens used were Stabilo. The rest of the pencils are Derwent, Art 101, and Royal and Langnickel. I erased the pencil lines with my Pentel Eraser. I hope you find this information rather useful.
