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Planckera Channel
Posted 3 days ago

Style experiment. I wanted to draw the same, fairly simple image three times in three different ways, while trying to keep similar vibes between all three. It's a drawing of one of my original characters. Her name is Holly, and I question my judgement for picking her for this, but it was very interesting to do! I've never attempted to draw heavy makeup before, so figuring out how to stylize that was also quite fun.

Anyway, the three styles I picked for this were a semi-realistic style, a more anime style, and a minimalist style. I kept the most detailed one up top and eliminated detail as I went down. Though I say that, I actually drew the center one first, as I figured it'd be easier to reuse parts of the image that way.

The most interesting part of this experiment to me was figuring out what I had to change. Some were obvious. The semi-realistic one needed a nose and smaller eyes, for example. I fully expected that going in. What I didn't expect was how much hair I had to take back in order to keep her hairstyle looking similar. The semi-realistic one has about half as much hair drawn in, but despite that, that's the one that looks like it has the most hair to me. I know for a fact that it has considerably less hair drawn though, because I copy and pasted the middle one after I drew it, then erased the center parts and put in smaller strands instead. Despite having objectively less hair drawn, the semi-realistic one looks like it has bigger hair on style alone.

I tried lots of different details on the minimalist one at the bottom, though I ended up not keeping most of them. For example, I tried adding some more shadows on the hair, both with screen tone (for a more pop art look) and with hatching, but I just didn't like it. What I did like was some of the additional details I added around the eyes. In the past, I kept them fairly flat, often a solid color with a specular highlight, and maybe a pupil if it's appropriate. This time, I added some more detail to the iris. It works well for a close up of the face like this I think. The most interesting change I had to make was angling the lines in the background. I added them to the center one to add a bit of subtle movement to the image, but when I made them stand out against the stark black background in the minimalist version, it actually made the image feel much more stable. Hence giving them some amount of direction.

I'm going to keep experimenting with stylization like this. It's been awhile since I've had this much fun drawing something, and it kept me curious all the way through.

Which image is your favorite? And how do you think about stylization in your own art?

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