Welcome to Gaia! ::

Honestly, what you've got there so far looks great. You've done good with the amount of solid black used and you have a good grasp on implying weight of the fabric like around her collar and on the sleeve of her hand. I'm not sure exactly what more detailing you would want to do though - it seems fine to me.

Perhaps the only thing I can think to comment on is how you've shaded the hair. With pale hair it always seems to be a case of 'less is more'. Once you've defined the main sections, you don't need to go in an shade everything. You can add additional lines that follow the main curve of that particular hair section more to help define it but using too many lines can make it look stringy and it looses that nice clean look it would otherwise have.

As always I drew a mental blank when trying to find something to illustrate my point so this is the best I could come up with for a pale haired manga character. They didn't really so much as shade the hair as just draw in extra strands to define the shape of it more. Another way would be like this and focusing on those parts that would be shadowed and 'flicking' the lines up into where its a lighter area to create the form and flow of the hair.

I wish I had experience with nib pens but alas, I could never get the lines to do what I wanted so I ended up just using fine liners to do line art.

In my search to try and find something potentially helpful for you, I came across this blog and he has a section regarding various brands of nibs.

For shadowing, you may want to look up books like this: Rendering in Pen and Ink.

I admire the fact you are going and doing this traditionally - I think it's becoming a lost art in a way with so many people switching to digital for everything. Traditional methods are harder and less forgiving in terms of making mistakes but at the same time I think there is always some 'character' in the lines themselves that is charming.

Hopefully what I've said makes sense and the links will be helpful.

I think it was you in your intro that said you wanted to learn more about drawing folds and frills - if you haven't already, check out the Clothing section in Resources, there are some tutes there that deal with those and some are very clear and straight forward by an artist on DA who makes Learning Manga tutorials.

I'm glad it made sense!

I'm assuming if you want to make a manga it means you read it as well so take a look and see how they go about shading those things you have issues with. There are so many ways of doing the same thing, it's just a matter of finding one that 'fits' with how you work.

I'm curious - with the shading are you going to rely just on the ink/nibs to do it with line and cross hatching? Or are you also going to use a brush to do ink washes etc as well? I know some artists use monochromatic copic markers too... or of course there's screen tone too.

Here's attempt #2:



(And ahhh I'm sorry I did it again with the hair. By the time I realized what I was doing, it was too late. emotion_facepalm Bad habits are hard to get rid off. orz )

I tried experimenting and mixed in different ways of shading. I still haven't gotten the hang of using markers just yet. @_@

Just recently, my cousin sent me a set of various nibs for my pen. I think I'll be able to do more variations in inking/shading with them. I'm gonna try experimenting with them next. emotion_yatta

Yeah, screen tone can be quite hard to come by.

I suppose an alternative would be using digital screen tone - so scanning in your finished line art and then adding the screen tone on the computer. There are so many free ones out there now that you can use.

If you wanted other traditional ways to shade - check this out for some quick clear examples on shading with pens. At the moment you seem to go for some very fine lines with your shading and a tip I saw somewhere was to use a ruler to draw them in to ensure they stay parallel. Here's another one again with the same traditional techniques but it's nice to see them used in various ways.

Markers are difficult - I have trouble with them as well crying I'm not sure what sort you use but the Copic Marker website does actually have some tutorials up that might be useful to have a look through, especially when you back track through some of their older posts.

After playing around with my markers, I noticed that if you want to get an even tone all across you sort of have to race against the drying time of the marker while at the same time going slow enough to let enough of the ink to sink into the page so you don't end up with thinner places that look streaky.

If you go over the same line once it's dried, you'll get a noticeable seam.

What seemed to work for me was nice long even zig-zag strokes so go down, move slightly across into the blank space and then bring the marker back up again so that your partly going over the still wet marker but adding a bit more into the blank space next to it.

Breaking large objects into smaller sections also helps to keep the tone even.

If you want to add subtle shading then you can go over with the same colour and it will sort of 'build up' a darker shade, or you can go straight to a darker marker if you want it to be more dramatic and noticeable.

Always play around on some scrap piece of paper to get a good feel for what you're about to do. Do copies of the thing you're about to shade and play around with it before committing to it on your final drawing.

Here's sorta what I did just now while trying to come up with ways to explain what I meant XD