Stage 1 - Rough structure: “First, I started very rough.” I roughed in the basic figure shape with lines and shapes, without thinking about detail at all. I was thinking about posture, balance, and proportion: head, chest, hips, arms, and legs. This drawing looks confusing, and that’s okay. This step of drawing is very important for someone just beginning to learn to draw because it helps to learn where things go before they look good.
2nd Phase – Defining armor shape boundaries:
“When I felt that body was okay, I started working on adding armor on top.” Now, I drew more defined lines over the sketch, transforming body parts into armor pieces. I began working on developing the chest, shoulder, leg, and arm regions slowly. I ensured everything was perfectly symmetrical. I was not pressing my pen too hard on the paper yet.
Stage 3 – Clean Lines & Details: “Then I committed to the final lines.” I covered the best lines with darker and more confident strokes and erased the unnecessary sketch lines by ignoring them. I then incorporated the small details such as joints, panels, and helmets. For beginners, this is where the skill of confident line work is taught. Draw slowly but don’t scratch the paper too much.
Step 4 – Shading and final touches: “Finally, I added shading to give it weight and depth.” To create this, I used simple hatching and shadows to indicate where it is raised and where it is in-depth. I also shaded where the ground would meet it to make it appear as though it is standing upright.
To finish a drawing, shading is a required process to make it complete and lifelike, even for a simple blue pen.
