Construct

As you can see in the diagram above, posture is key to identifying your characters personality. When we create a construct we can plan out our character before we create the lines. This will lead up to getting a better result. Follow the chart and you'll be fine.

When we create a construct we build the muscle over the construct. This is where you determine how much muscle or fat your character has.

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Lines

Once we have the construct, we can start adding the lines. The picture above shows the construct in red and the lines in black. All we have to do is go over the construct and add in the shape of the person.

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Cleaning Up

So we have our lines, now let's clean them up. Smooth out all the ridges.

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Face Shapes

There are endless variations with face shapes. I have put just a few of the most popular face shapes found in art today.

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Features

Let's draw guide lines so we can position the facial features correctly. Now let's draw in the features.

Now let's finalize that with black.

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Color

Color is fun because it can be customized. It can be as wacky or as plain as you want it to be. For this person I just picked some normal colors. Hmphhh... This is weird, let's get some clothes on this guy.

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Advanced Coloring

There are two different categories for advanced coloring, linear and radial gradients. In those categories we have sub-categories, 2-color gradients, multi-color gradients and compound gradients. Above you'll see examples of all of these different types of gradients.

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Clothing

So we first use red to draw out the clothing outline.

Then we finalize it in black and color it.

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Shading

Shading is fun because you can bring your character to life. Make sure that you make some sections darker on your character. Take in to consideration where your light is coming from.

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Advanced Shading

Here, you'll see two different balls. Each is lighted according to where the light source is from. You'll see three different types of shade. The highlight, the shadow and the drop shadow.

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The Drawing Method

The Drawing Method is a series of steps in creating a character. The example above shows how I would go about drawing a cat. There are 5 steps in completing The Drawing Method.

1. Rough - Rough drawing, this is what you build your drawing off of.

2. Outline - Create the outline of your character.

3. Final - Your final, refined drawing.

4. Color - Simple, flat colors.

5. Shading - Add some shadows, gradients and highlights to complete your drawing.

Once again, here is The Drawing Method of drawing a face.

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Expressions

I'll just try to scratch the surface of expressions. There are endless possibilities when it comes to expressions. Here are some very common ones. When creating an expression you want to consider a few things.

-What muscles are being used?

-How are they feeling?

-How extreme is this expression?

These are all the things you have to consider when you are making an expression.

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Line Variation

So, you want line variation. Well, look at the picture above and you can see line variation adds a lot of depth to the picture. It really makes the picture...POP.

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Other References

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Credit

Made by superflyest, modified by lemoz.