From Dynamic Geometric Construction to Colors — The "Haku???" Painting Process

Finished playful redraw of Haku in an ink and gold-leaf style

Hello everyone, I'm Wei, instructor at WeiChen Studio 維真電繪筆記. Thank you so much for purchasing our recently released Personalized Creature Character Design and Ink-Style Characters courses! On this last day of August, with the school term drawing near, let's share some of the basic thinking and workflow behind how I paint figures! Wait — that sentence has nothing to do with the previous one

1. Conceiving the line art

Line art is the crucial first step when we draw. When sketching it, I recommend first breaking the body down into geometric pieces, and drawing the body as if it were "transparent." As you can see in the image below, when I block in a figure, I first take the joints apart and treat everything as geometric solids. Rather than trying — imprecisely — to nail it in one pass, it's better to deconstruct and geometrize first, confirm the gesture and perspective, and then refine the line art. I believe this builds much better habits of mind.

Figure blocked in as transparent geometric solids to plan the gesture

When students' homework came in this time, one of them geometrized the chest and pelvis by treating the body's cavities as box shapes (below).

That approach is great too. Whatever way you geometrize the body, though, hold to one big principle — the line art must convey "thickness" and "a sense of space."

How to draw thickness and spatial depth with lines is explained in more detail in our Yotta course "Corel Painter Grayscale Character Painting | Draw Dynamic Character Illustrations" and our site's "Photoshop Digital Painting - Ink-Style Characters". If you're interested, you're welcome to purchase them and support our teaching <(_ _)>

Student homework geometrizing the torso as boxes in perspective

2. Settling the line art

After the gesture sketch above, the figure we're painting has emerged faintly from the fog of the initial concept. Next I use more definite lines to sketch out the character. I originally wanted to use a dragon's movement to guide the viewer's eye, but felt it genuinely disrupted the reading flow of Haku's JoJo-style pose. So, to keep the focus on the subject, I removed the dragon and kept only the circle above for visual unity.

Line art with visual guide lines and the unifying circle above

3. Separating light and dark

Here I separate just three grayscale levels: the background, and the figure's light and dark sides. Only after these three are separated do I move on to building volume.

Three-level grayscale separation of background and the figure's light and dark sides

4. Base tinting:
Tint the figure's basic local colors with Overlay or Multiply. By habit, I prefer grayish colors for the base — I find it convenient for later color unification or layered glazing.

Figure with grayish base colors tinted over the grayscale

5. Bringing in the paper:

At this stage, I wanted the piece to carry an antique paper color. So after tinting the paper toward yellow, the figure took on the same aged yellow cast.

Painting unified under an antique yellowed-paper tone

6. Strengthening the feeling of direct light and brightening the paper color

The go-board grid lines were composited on from a board-grid image I found.

As for skin tones, our Tibame [WeiChen Studio] Photoshop Digital Painting Techniques - Western-Style Character Design and "Photoshop Digital Painting - Ink-Style Characters" courses explain skin color mixing in detail. Interested friends are welcome to purchase the Western-Style Character Design or Ink-Style Characters course.

Direct light strengthened over the figure and paper

7. Refining continuously, minding how the elements harmonize:

The background uses dry brushes for gold leaf and weathered paper texture, and the hair ornament follows Bucciarati's style. The zipper pull, however, is a totemized No-Face — adding to the chaotic feeling this character is meant to give (?)

Refined details with gold leaf texture and the No-Face zipper pull

7. Painting the white dragon line art in the background:

The ink-feel line brush used here is included with "Photoshop Digital Painting - Ink-Style Characters"

White dragon line art painted into the background with ink brushes

8. Adding the signature and seal, then unifying the falling petals, dust, and other fine tertiary shapes — finished

The background dragon was colored in as low-contrast a key as possible, and the waves reference the work of ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi.

Final artwork with signature, seal, petals, and ukiyo-e-inspired waves

Final thoughts:

As this process shows, a figure's movement and pose truly matter enormously in figure painting.

I built this painting's line art detail step by step, continuously adjusting the pose along the way. So as for nailing it in one stroke at the start — I believe you can take it slow: block the simple geometry first, then gradually raise the precision and draw out the detailed structure.

Watching people burst out laughing at this piece made me very happy. What made me even happier was that, while looking, they discovered the many compositional ideas and easter eggs I buried in it. Sometimes, the people making the jokes are the ones who take joking most seriously.

That's it for the painting process of "Haku? Akira Toya? Bucciarati?" — see you next time from WeiChen Studio 維真電繪筆記 :)