To celebrate the success of the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a video game published by Nintendo, I illustrated this piece of Zelda, the princess of Hyrule. I actually drew this before the game came out, so I only had the trailers to use as reference. The one scene that stood out to me the strongest was seeing Zelda in a white dress looking sad in a pool of water with a Goddess Statue in front of her, looking ancient and deserted.

The Finished Illustration

I applied a few drawing techniques that I don't normally use for most of my art. One of these is using the smudge tool to blend out the otherwise cel-type shading. In addition to softening my colors, I also continued to apply complimentary colors and highlights using the spray brush tool. I primarily draw using Clip Studio Paint EX, but all of these methods can be accomplished in Adobe Photoshop and other comparable software.

Another technique I used is called color holds, which refers to the coloring of the line art. Most of my artwork retains the black line art, but I thought this piece needed that extra something to blend the color and create a soft and surreal atmosphere. The important thing to remember about color holds is to make sure the line art is not too light in tone, otherwise it will clash with the shading of the shape or area and look like it's glowing.

The Wire Frame

This year I've really put in a lot of effort to draw the wire frame first and not just wing it. Doing so has dramatically increased the overall quality of my work, in my opinion. It doesn't matter how long I've been drawing, I can't just pump out perfect lines the first time around and call it finished. I still require a solid foundation and it's important that my anatomy looks good before adding any detail or features.

It's funny, this year I've purchased a male and female posing figure specifically for this stage of the drawing of the drawing process. But I've only used them once or twice. I feel so comfortable making my own wire frame figures using nothing more than circles and lines that I I think my posing figures are going to be nothing more than a decoration on my shelf. At least they can look epic, posed in some crazy martial arts entanglement.

The Sketch

Sketching the drawing used to be the first thing I did for so many years. I would get in the zone and draw so much detail and sometimes realize that something looked off. Perhaps an arm was too long or the face was a little skewed. This is why having a wire frame as a guide helps to keep me from making these kind of mistakes. Even so, I can always use the selection tool and re-size/move any portion of the sketch to fix the mistake. My most common post-sketch adjustment is re-sizing the head to correct proportion.

Sometimes my wife prefers the sketch because the messy lines give it a stylized look, something raw and honest. I don't worry about perfection, that's what the line art is suppose to do. I'm pretty light on my sketches. I don't ever draw too many lines or else the object becomes indistinguishable and then I have difficulty tracing over it, trying to figure it out.

The Line Art

I take my time with the line art. I usually set my G-Pen tool with a high stabilization setting so that my lines are straight and smooth. This is especially helpful when drawing a single long line that stretches the canvas and I have to zoom out far enough to make it in a single stroke. Otherwise I can do it in pieces, but I have difficulty making the many strokes connect seamlessly, especially when taking pen-pressure into accommodation.

I draw using anti-alias turned off. I believe anti-aliasing has a purpose, but I personally believe it works best when images are low resolution and it helps blend out an otherwise "pixelated" look. But my canvas size is always 600 dpi, at least, and when scaled down for web-viewing the lineart always looks nice and crisp, just the way I like it. Another advantage of having my lines without anti-aliasing is that I can use the paint-bucket tool to fill in the areas without worrying about any soft edges or feathering.

The hard edges also allow me to use the magic wand tool to select the areas with precision. The downside is there are always a few stranded pixels that don't get filled because they are trapped, isolated, usually where the line art contains a sharp angle. But I've never noticed these minor "imperfections" when all is said and done. If I worry about if every pixel in my canvas is perfect or not, I would go insane and never finish any work of art.

The Flat Colors

I've already touched about using the paint bucket tool to fill in my line art (on a separate layer). Another things I like to mention when choosing my colors is that I personally use low tone, de-saturated colors as my base. When adding the shadows, I find it brings out the color. Therefore, if I used vibrant colors first and shaded on top, the whole image would look like it came out a Saturday morning cartoon. Plus, I believe the dull colors make it look more realistic because that's what our world usually looks like.

That's pretty much all I have to say about this piece. Did you like it? Please upvote if you found this post entertaining, educational, or encouraging. I want to inspire all amateur artists to keep drawing and keep learning new techniques and styles. If you have any requests for future posts, please let me know with a comment below!