My first Animé Convention - How To Draw Manga - Basics

There was an Animé Convention held at Southend Library today and it was their first one. I have never been to one of these before and have always longed to, so once I found out I finally had the opportunity I jumped at the chance.

The library held a variety of activities, such as an Art Workshop, Basic Japanese Language, How To Make Sushi, Film Screenings, Cosplay Competition etc. As you all know, I love art, so I took the Art Class!

My teacher was a professional Manga artist who went by the name of "Nana Li" (I assume she's Chinese) and she's a freelance illustrator who has a degree in Bio Engineering. I kid you not.
She's a very talented artist who has drawn for Shakespeare Manga "Twelfth Night" plus other things, and if you're into Art or feel the need to get in touch with her, this is her website, blogspot page and Twitter:
http://nanarealm.com
http://nanarealm.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/LiNana

I recorded practically the entire class for all you budding artists out there. You'll have to turn the volume right up to hear her though, I'm afraid.







As you will see in one of the videos, Nana asked me about DragonballZ characters and asked me to draw their sort of hairstyles on the board. I decided to draw Vegeta's hair since it's the easiest, as it's basically tall and spikey. She then asked me to draw Goku's which is a tad more complicated...but anyway. She basically said that this sort of hairstyle was an exception in Animé, as in most Animé's the hairstyles are more normal, i.e. not defying gravity, and that "DragonballZ type hair" is not what we would be studying. Haha!

Towards the end of the session, Nana Li held a competition. You had to draw a character that was a Ninja, but had to incorporate another theme to it, such as Vampire Ninja, School Girl Ninja etc. She said the winner would be based on creativity and originality, NOT technically.

Drawing with a dodgy pencil and no rubber is pretty difficult, I'll admit, but I somehow managed to draw a School Girl Ninja. It really wasn't my best effort (er, at all) but we only had about 20 minutes and it was basically the best I could come up with. I mean, Ninja and School Girl?? Kay...
(Funny moment of the day: Calum was drawing his picture and was really concentrating on the face. Nana Li said we had 7 minutes to go and Calum was like "No!! I have to draw the body yet!! OMG!!")

I wrote annontations next to my drawing so Nana could see why I chose them and that I actually put thought into it (although my notes are quite lame. Funny, but lame.)


SEEEEE???

Shocking.

Anyway, we handed our pieces in and we waited anxiously as Nana judged them. There were to be five winners and the five lucky ones would win one of her Artworks. I honestly thought (and still do) that my drawing was a bit poo and never expected to get called out, so when I did I was pretty amazed and was like "No way - REALLY?"

This is the Artwork I chose:



And this is one of the demonstrations Nana drew in class:



And these are some other drawing's Nana has done:





Honestly...CHECK HER OUT!

It's Britney, bitch.

If you've been following me from the beginning you'll have known that I draw.

I'm a self-taught artist and I'm still learning. Heck - I don't know how to paint, so I stick to pencils, sometimes watercolour pencils (how do you use them? Not a clue, I make it up as I go along...) and sometimes chalk and charcoal.

I've also liked Britney since she released her first single "...Baby One More Time" and I've never actually drawn her, so I figured it was about time I did.

I used the colour and black and white image of this picture to copy:





These are my step by step pictures.









So the eyes were practically done, and I was pretty pleased with them.
Next was the lips, and as you can probably tell I had difficulty with the shape. Once I thought it was correct, I started to use my watercolour pencils (red and black) to try and give that "Dark Hollywood Glamour" feel to it, but it was disasterous. Trying to blend watercolour pencils before applying water is a very difficult thing to do...there were too many lines and just looked plain awful. I tried using the water on top to see if it would improve but it didn't improve at all, just looked messy.
I then used a normal colouring pencil that was of a berry colour to try and go over it a little bit (the black kinda took over a bit) and I thought my picture was completely tarnished.
I used Tippex to give the lips a shine to them, and used a red manga pen to go over it and give the lips some lines on the bottom lip.

And thank God as well, as I believe it saved my picture.
I also used watercolour pencils to colour in the eyes.





And the final piece...



It took me about 3 hours. I know it's not perfect, but hope you like it nonetheless.