Artwork: Snowfield Resolve

Drawn By: WrittenDusk

Another theme I've been wanting to tackle for sometime now. The image of a knight with a stern resolve against adversity; inspired by Sabre from the "Fate" series. But I didn't want the character to be just a generic knight, I wanted to give her more identity, so I decided to do a modern medieval cross over. The results turned out much better than I expected.

I kind of took my time again with this drawing, but with how well it turned out I'm actually not as disappointed this time. I'm not writing this off as being ok just because the art turned out good, but I felt like the art did benefit from the extended time. It was almost always pleasant drawing this, which in turn made sure my awareness and patience while drawing was at their best. Now if only I can fuse this with speed!

But work ethic and philosophy aside, this is probably my best original art so far. This drawing actually shares many similarities to my Megaman Zero fan art, so much of the main merits carry over. The main difference this time is that I think I'm starting to understand how I should colour to achieve this result. It kind of just happened with my Megaman Zero fan art.

The most important factor is simply colouring it in a way that fits the drawing your trying to draw. What I mean by this is to keep in mind what your trying to draw, and how to make it look good. Once you have the general theme and idea, keep to it as much as possible. Anything that doesn't have much relation to the idea should be put aside. Then as you draw, rather than evaluating whether your drawing is realistic and natural, evaluate it on whether it looks good, or not. 

This may feel contradicting to our aim as an artist, but its not as crazy as it sounds. This is because more often then not what looks good tends to look more natural and/or realistic in the end. Also especially in terms of what I like to draw, looking good is king. This is something I've been confusing myself with for some time now. 

My goal up until now was to make things look as natural and realistic as possible, in their own ways. I believed that if that can achieve my drawings will naturally look good. But it is in fact the other way around. My art teacher has mentioned that what we do as an artist is to create a convincing illusion, and I've kept this to heart, but I think I haven't been interpreting it correctly until now. In terms of commercial art: anime, manga, cartoons, games, and comics; natural and realistic equals good, but good does not equal natural and realistic.

There's a nuance in this distinction that I am beginning to understand better now through this drawing. Hopefully I'll come to draw even better and faster as I understand it more.

Hoped you enjoyed the drawing, and find what I wrote entertaining at the very least.