Basic Tutorial
Step One: Open up your illustration applet of choice. I used Paint Tool SAI for this illustration. Please note that you can do this with paper, pencil, and pen as well. When you open your program and open up your new illustration file, choose a size that you are comfortable with. The larger the document size, the smaller the lines will seem, or they will be smaller if you choose to make the image smaller when you are completed. I will be drawing an image of my character Lokai for this tutorial.
Step Two: Using the airbrush tool (or a reduced opacity pen or a very light pencil if you're doing a drawing on paper), you will use three basic shapes for building the body- a circle with a triangular point for the head, a hourglass for the torso (you'll use more of a curved box for male figures), and ovals for the arms. Ovals will overlap. As well, feel free to use whatever proportions you're used to. I use a 5-6 head tall proportion, and I add in the general face proportion for eyes, nose, and mouth.
Step Three: Using a different color for the airbrush tool (still pencil, but slightly darker) start filling out your character's body details such as face shape, torso/hip sizes, arm and leg length and thickness. These details are all dependant on the artist. As a note from analyzing other people drawing, no parts of the body connect at a sharp angle- the body is full of curves.
Step Four: Start sketching out more important details in a darker color (Pencil, more darker, but still light enough you can erase just fine) such as clothes, hair, face details, hand details, feet/shoes, and accessories.
Step Five: Start a new layer for inking. On paper, you will be directly inking over pencil and erasing the pencil lines. If you are using a digital program, go over it with a full opacity pen tool in black, or even a color with a slightly lower opacity for an interesting effect (Which I have done with this image in brown.) Remove your first layer when you have completed inking your illustration.
Step Six: For coloring, you'll just do a different thing on each layer: Skin Layer, Hair layer, Clothes layers (depends on the outfit your character is wearing. This illustration has two). I normally do the eyes on the skin layer, but that can have it's own layer as well. However, I will make a note that coloring also heavily depends on the style of the artist. Draw the background on the lowest layer.
Step Seven: Merge all your layers, do all edits that you need (i.e., document sizing, effects, ect.) and save your completed image!
Completed Image:
