Shannon McSorley

The original drawing done by Nakamura Asumiko from her manga J No Subete.

Started my basic line work, filling in the black as needed.

Finished up the basic line work.

Did the scissors with a combo of free hand and using a line tool. I tested out how to do the hair in the bottom right corner.

HOLY SHIT. This was RIDICULOUS. This is why Nakamura-sensei is my favorite artist. Her fluidity of lines is impossible for me to capture. I did my best but you can tell how the lines simply pale in comparison to hers. But I was overall satisfied with how it turned out. She does use a mouse and I use a pen so I wonder if that has to do with anything....

After deciding that I liked his hair color I filled it all in using nothing but my ink tool and airbrush. I could have filled it using bucket but I rarely use it since A) I don't like it B) it feels more like I'm drawing on pen and paper this way.

Checking his hair against white.

Went in a did his basic skin tone. J has a super creamy olivey complexion. I went with a slightly more pinkish tone than Nakamura-sensei did so that his vibrant cheeks I was going to add in wouldn't look so strange.

Did the other person's basic skin tone. Since it didn't matter what color these hands were I went with a skin tone I already had in my palette that I use for my other characters. You can see the difference from an "average" skin tone and J's.

Started to flesh out J. Adding in some pinkness.

I tested out the highlights and low-lights first before I did anything dramatic. Here I started to line out where his low-lights would go. (Working from lightest to darkest.) I lightened the BG and his base color so I would be able to see it better.

Went in and added some more shading in his hair with a slightly darker color around the edges to start giving it depth.

Did the same thing only with an even darker color.

Again, did the same thing but with an even darker color and blended out the color using blur and water.

Finished the depth on his whole head. At this point I had zoomed out fully and was very happy with how it turned out and I had never done curly hair like this and was super happy.

Added in some highlights and shine on his curls.

Did some clean up on all the layers, especially the hair since I had to blur a lot, there were quite a few fuzzy spots. Darkened up the background. I picked purple maybe becasue I had grown fond of it at this point, but I tried with a variety of colors and back grounds from patterns and prints and bright colors but picked a deep good 'ol basic purple. AND WE'RE DONE! WOOT WOOT! Not bad. Not bad at all. Incredibly happy with it, especially since I thought I wan't going to be able to do it.