Fan Art: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild - Zelda

Drawn By: WrittenDusk

A fanart of Zelda from the recently released "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" for Wii U and the newly launched Nintendo Switch. Although it is a fanart of sorts it is much more a sketch of the official promotional art; which is intentional. I'll have the link to the artwork below.

This was mainly done to celebrate the release and launch of the much anticipated "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" and Nintendo Switch; although I missed the March 3rd date (T-T). Aside from celebrating, this was also done in admiration to the design of this incarnation of Zelda.

I had fun doing this and quite a bit of nostalgia as well, because of all the sketching I did back in my school and art lesson days. What surprised me though was how I still have similar difficulties in sketching other peoples' art as I did in the past.

Going into this drawing I was pretty confident, since I have been drawing character arts for quite awhile now, but coming out of it I am reminded that things are never one to one.

After years of drawing my own characters and compositions I forgot what it's like to sketch another person's work, and what it means to do so. The skills I've accumulated from my own drawings definitely improved my speed and accuracy while drawing, but more than anything else the thought process was what hindered me the most. 

Sketching is to interpret, if not copy, the other person's work, and in doing so their thought process as well. You trace back their process from finish to beginning and redo it yourself from beginning to finish. 

So when I started I thought I could interpret most of the drawing and just run with it. But of course it didn't take me long to find things looking undesirably different. The most noticeable differences are the perspective of and on the character, as well as the volume of the character. This is not only a result of skill differences, but also differences in our approach to drawing characters. This is also true in colouring.

I've recognized that my strengths are in drawing characters and that I still had a long way to go, but this sketch really shined new light on aspects that I thought I was competent in already.

It truly is exciting when you discover that you can get even better. This is one of those times that I learned something without feeling defeated. \( ^-^ )/.

I really like how this turned out in the end; though the colouring and some parts of the drawing could be better. Hope you enjoyed it!   

(Did you notice the Switch?)

Link:
Zelda Promotional Art