Death the Kid Picture, & Drawing in Anime Style

Okay, first of all, my Nanowrimo efforts seem to have gone down the drain.  The last few days I've had the strong desire to draw, and so I decided I had better take advantage of that.  I'm afraid that if I were to wait until after Nanowrimo, I won't feel like it anymore.

So, I'm back to drawing.  I haven't given up on the story I'm writing, I'm just temporarily shifting around my priorities.

On that note, I finished a picture!  (And I plan on starting another one as soon as I'm done posting this.  I know just what I want to do.)

This is a character named Death the Kid (he's the son of the Grim Reaper, thus the name) from the anime "Soul Eater."  There's a scene where he whips out some super powers and glows blue, and I thought it was such a cool looking scene, I wanted to draw it.

I've always been fond of photography that's been edited so that it's in black and white with
a single color still left, or a single object still in color, and so I tried to imitate that.  He's done with pencil, with colored pencil for the blue (and some mild photoshopping to help enhance/smooth out the glow effect).

I've never drawn anyone from that angle before, so that was a fun challenge.  I had to finally resort to grabbing my camera and taking pictures of myself so that I had a reference picture to draw from.

I enjoy doing fan art.  I feel like it's a way I can pay tribute to the things I love, and, in a way, it's a way for me to voice my opinion on it.  It's a way of saying, "When I read/watch that story, this is what I walk away with.  This is how it makes me feel."  As I've gotten more and more into anime, I'm always being reminded while working on my art that... I can't draw in anime style to save my life!  Most of the time, I don't even want to.  I feel like, since I'm giving my "opinion" of the character or scene, I want it to be in my style, to further the idea that this is my drawing, showing how I feel about things.  Drawing in my own style is a way of making the picture not just about the character, but about myself, also.  But once in a while, I think it would be nice to draw a character as they originally appear in the show, or to draw a non-anime character in that style.  And then I go and crash and burn at it.  Heh heh!

I know good and well it's because I try to draw in that style so rarely that I haven't put in nearly enough practice to do it properly.  I'm always so focused on working on, and experimenting with, my own style that I don't want to take the time to learn how to draw in a completely different style.

However, I'm glad I chose not to go down The Path of the Anime in learning to draw.  Anime can look pretty darn awesome when it's done well, but it often sacrifices drawing realistically in exchange for what looks cool.  Personally, I would rather learn to draw things as they really are, rather than drawing in that stylized of a fashion.

Alright!  That's all I've got!  I'm off to draw a couple of other characters having a holy-crap-panic moment, which should be good fun!  See ya!