Phoenix of the X-men - Digital Drawing

Some time ago, I joined a wonderful group on Facebook related to art, both traditional and digital, although most members focus more on the latter, I found it very dynamic, as members interact quite a lot with each other, giving advice, recognizing the efforts of others and even encouraging them to continue improving.

In addition, in this group they usually make challenges, until now I have seen three, the "Pastel Girl Challenge" (that I have not yet finished), the "Capcom Nouveau" and the challenge "Your drawing my drawing", which consists in leaving a comment some drawing of yours, either of an original character or a fan art, which later would be assigned to another member who must draw it again with his own style.

In my case I had to redraw a fan art of the x-men Phoenix, made by Geoglez, which has been a wonderful experience, because there is a certain level of difficulty in emulating the art of someone else without falling into a simple copy, although I have tried to keep as much as possible the pose and wardrobe.

_{Original drawing by Geoglez}

This illustration was done with the help of Autodesk Sketchbook and Photoshop, as usual I started with the sketch, to establish the posture and locate the elements that make up the character, although I decided not to detail too much, you can see that I had difficulty with the left hand (of the character), so I had to draw some postures for her in free spaces, seeking to find the most suitable according to my criteria, which resulted in a closed fist and decided to keep the other attempts to share them with you. Remember that the sketch seeks to express quickly the idea that we have in our mind, but sometimes we must try several times to reach the desired result.

As you can see, I skipped the step of lineart (clean delineation), I did this because I wanted to give a semi-realistic aspect to the character, in addition to having the reference image, I had a pretty clear idea of the result and the details I wanted to get. Applying an intense tone to the background, I proceeded to color directly guided by the sketch, starting with the skin sections, where I have applied that different tone of light skin, and then go shading and giving volume and definition to the face.

As I commented in the previous paragraph, I focused mainly on the face, as I wanted to achieve that effect of semi-realism, highlighting the eyes as they are the window of the soul and reflect the personality of each character, then I have taken an intense orange tone to establish the shadows and give volume to the nose and cheekbones of the cheeks, it has made it a little difficult for me to perform my lips correctly, I had to try several times until I liked them a little, I must practice this element more.

The time came to draw the clothes, specifically the blouse, in the original image it was a semi-transparent light garment, this effect did not take so much into account, because I wanted to illuminate the contours and did not want to notice the nipples, although I respected the size of the breasts and the tattoo between them.

I forgot to save the process, so at this point there is a sudden change; in short, I continued to color the clothes, both the trousers and the ribbon around the waist, as there is a strong light source in both hands of the character, the shading of the trousers is mostly where both thighs meet.

Complementarily, I added the hair as the drawing looked quite strange, in the original image had fire instead of hair, but I wanted to combine both, so I combined the hair with the flames getting a pretty cool effect. Since Phoenix is a very powerful mutant, I have tried to reflect her power by giving her an aura of flames coming from her.

Finally I have taken the illustration to Photoshop to add some effects, including the flames around the character, which I retouched with a rustic brush, giving them more savagery and therefore greater power, also I have added some shadows on the skin, for greater enhancement of it.

I hope you liked this illustration, the challenge has been very funny, as shown by a character made by me (I hope someday finish) and with him the representation given by Samantha D. Voltaire (I do not have his instagram).

Original character created by me	Drawing by Samantha