The Companions or Clothing

When I'm drawing one of my characters, there is usually one thing on my mind: the face. The face is the part of a drawing that I MUST get right before I can feel happy moving on to something else - if the expression is wrong, or the eyes are positioned incorrectly, it can ruin an entire drawing for me. This is because when I see a drawing of a person, the first aspect I am drawn to is the face. The subject of an artwork, the primary character, creates a mood for me based on their expression, and I seek out that mood. That helps me form my initial reaction of whether I like or dislike a piece of art. The surrounding and aesthetics come after - for me, I like to go to the expressions first. Even if there is no "characters" in the work; I seek the expression in whatever the primary character of the work is.

But what am I rambling about? This post is about accessories in a drawing, not the face conveying emotion. My point is, I spend so much time obsessing over the emotion of the face in my art, I often neglect the extra bits. This isn't necessarily considered BAD. There are plenty of artists who don't feel comfortable drawing certain things, and they often stick to particular tropes in their work. I in particular have a penchant for drawing characters with simple clothing designs and minimal backgrounds, if any. It's what I tend to draw more than anything else. I still put a lot of attention to detail and care in my work, but most of it goes into making the character look good. Due largely in part to my inexperience with the other aspects.

Oh clothing, oh clothing, why do I have such difficulty with you? Forget about the post details like folds and texture (I could get into a completely different rant about my difficulty with that - one at a time now), I just have a hard time coming up types of clothing to draw that look interesting. I'm not including plain old shirts/jeans/whatever in this because they're run-of-the-mill and take little to no thought to come up with. Best case scenario would be drawings like Union on this Night where I research a particular type of clothing and create a design mixing my own style and whatever I happened upon. Worst case would be ones in which I just make up the design on the fly. I know I've said in a recent post that drawing the first thing that comes to your head can be a fun tactic when you're low on ideas (trust me, I do it all the time), but when you get down to nitty gritty details and accessory designs, you really should have SOME kind of plan for them. It doesn't take too much effort to make believable clothing, but it also doesn't take much more than that to make clothing look ridiculous. Unless ridiculous IS your style - there are exceptions for everything. :p

That's about it this time. I don't have any solid advice for you on clothing because I'm not very experienced with the topic myself. ^^; But if I'd say anything, it's this - unless it's clothing that's not being worn, the item should compliment the owner wearing it. No matter what type of situation it's in - a formal suit, school clothes, casual wear, a weird outfit the character in question would never wear - ANYTHING can work, no matter how ridiculous or straightforward. It's all a matter of finding the thin line that makes the clothing look like clothing. The easiest way to find this line, in my opinion, is to draw your clothing around the character last. Don't start drawing their clothing right where the collar begins - draw them as if they were naked first. (unless they're actually supposed to be, but in which case my tirade about clothing does not apply to you XD) Finalize the pose of the body before doing any accessories - then you'll be able to more firmly accentuate the clothing to the lines you've just defined, rather than trying to figure out the shape as you're creating the clothes. You're performing two steps at once that way, and if you can do it, more power to you. But if you find that makes things difficult or you're just not happy with how your clothed characters look, try it the way I said and see if that makes a difference. :)

I decided I hadn't drawn the siblings in awhile, so I'm letting Chung and Quan share the limelight today. The focus for this one was, of course, the clothing! I had an early vision of the two in Lord-of-the-Rings-esque outfits, or anything that could be considered LoTR-esque. I think I managed that okay with Quan, but Chung....she looks a little more like a gladiator. Or a well-clothed amazonian. Do you guys think so? Ah well. I was going for adventure/fantasy clothing, so both of them fit it well enough. I especially had fun designing their weapons and the shield - they get across the style I wanted more than the characters themselves. For this sketch I tried out the older style of nose these two used to have - I don't know if I like it. I'll probably go back to my more conventional nose style in the future.