Demonstration
Little Wing

Extreme Makeover: Taking Your Character from Drab to Fab

How do you transform a family photo or a gray mannequin into an interesting character? Consider actors in a play. They don’t walk onstage in their street clothes as the curtain rises. They wear costumes and hairstyles to get into character. They may even carry props. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, for example, Johnny Depp wore a signature red Edwardian jacket and top hat, and he carried a cane. He even wore buck-toothed dentures to get his smile into character. You can do the same in your drawings. Consider the beginning drawing as an actor you can dress up to show personality.

STEP 1: Sketch Your Character

Set up your reference photo and/or artist mannequin next to a piece of sketch paper (roughly letter-sized). Begin to draw your character using the reference materials to guide the shape of the face and body. For now, keep the clothing simple. Just draw the character wearing a plain T-shirt and skirt. Make sure the hairstyle complements her personality.

STEP 2: Add Personality

Once you have a plain sketch, add details that convey the character’s personality. Use a real feather to help you draw the feathers on her skirt.

STEP 3: Continue Adding Details

Draw a rainbow and a little sun on her T-shirt.

STEP 4: Add the Animal Totem

Add a bird on her shoulder to represent her animal totem.

STEP 5: Add Butterflies and Stars

Sketch a butterfly in her hair and smaller butterflies and stars around her head.

STEP 6: Embellish the Sketch

Add expressive details, like a small bird on her T-shirt and a flower growing up one knee sock. When you’ve finished the sketch, you’ll transfer it to kraft-colored cardstock using white wax-free transfer paper.

STEP 7: Test the Transfer Paper

Position the transfer paper on top of a dark colored sheet of scrap paper and make a mark with your fingernail on it. If you see white, you’ll know the downward-facing side will transfer. You’ll want this side touching your kraft surface!

STEP 8: Prepare the Transfer

Cut a piece of transfer paper to a size just a little bigger than your character sketch. Tape it mark-making side down to the kraft-colored cardstock.

STEP 9: Place the Sketch

Position your drawing over the transfer paper. Make sure the transfer paper is under all the lines of the drawing.

STEP 10: Trace the Sketch

Using a pencil, trace the entire sketch, pressing down firmly as you go. Lift up the drawing after a few strokes to make sure it’s transferring. Completely trace all of your lines.

STEP 11: Finish the Transfer

Lift up the original drawing, untape it and voilà! You have a beautiful white outline of your drawing ready to be painted with gouache and gel pen.

STEP 12: Choose a Palette

What colors work for your character? Go through your color chips and pick out colors that evoke her personality. Here I’ve picked white for innocence, pink for femininity, magenta for spirituality and yellow for her sunny disposition. You can include black to stand in as a neutral. (As I used the same song for inspiration for both Ray of Light and Little Wing, I also used the same color palette.)

STEP 13: Create Color Swatches

Make swatches of your chosen colors on a blank piece of kraft paper to use as a guide. To keep it simple, use only three gouache colors—Pale Pink, Rose Tyrien and Primary Yellow—along with paler tints of the Rose Tyrien and Primary Yellow (achieved by mixing them with Titanium White). Make additional swatches of color with your chosen gel pens.

STEP 14: Outline the Body

Outline the unclothed parts of the body with a 01 Micron pen. The great thing about kraft-colored cardstock is that it can stand in for skin tones.

STEP 15: Draw the Facial Features

Since the face is such an important part of your character, it helps to jump in by bravely penning in the eyes, nose and mouth with a 01 Micron pen early in the process. This way, if you mess it up, you can start again without having to redo the entire piece.

STEP 16: Prepare Your Paint Palette

Get ready to add color. Lay out dollops of Pale Pink, Rose Tyrien, Primary Yellow and Titanium White gouache on your palette paper.

STEP 17: Paint the Shirt

With a no. 1 round, paint the shirt yellow. Leave the details (bird, rainbow and sun) blank.

STEP 18: Mix a Yellow Tint

Mix a pale yellow tint by adding Titanium White to your Primary Yellow gouache and blending with a brush or a palette knife.

STEP 19: Add Some Sunshine

Switch to a no. 00 round watercolor brush and paint the skirt with the pale yellow tint. Paint around the feathers so the kraft paper color stands out against the creamy background.

STEP 20: Paint the socks

Paint the knee socks with Pale Pink.

STEP 21: Add Small Details

Still using the no. 00 round, paint in the small details. Use Rose Tyrien and Pale Pink for the bird and a mixture of Primary Yellow with a twinge of Rose Tyrien for the sun on her T-shirt.

STEP 22: Add the Stars and Butterflies

Fill in the butterflies and birds with Titanium White. Add tiny stars with the tip of your paintbrush.

STEP 23: Add Clothing Details

Use the gel pens to add details like the rainbow, bird and sun on her T-shirt. These pens are great for popping details. Once dry, they glow against the darker kraft-colored background.

STEP 24: Color the Shoes

Make her shoes glow by coloring them in with a pink gel pen. Color the flower on her knee sock with gel pen, too.

STEP 25: Add Glitter

Add a touch of red glitter gel pen to the feathers and tummy of the bird to bring it to life.

STEP 26: Detail the Feathers

Fill in feather designs on the skirt using a white gel pen.

STEP 27: Outline the Feathers

If you outline the feathers with a 01 black Micron pen, they will really stand out and balance the dark of the character’s hair.

STEP 28: Erase Transfer Marks

Erase stray marks left from the transfer paper once you’re finished painting.

Tell the Story

Who is your character? How do the details you’ve added to her clothing reflect her personality? What kind of trouble could she get into and how might she and her totem animal conspire to get out of danger? What character might become her best friend?

I also “krafted” this character inspired by the Queen of Wands in tarot.