Realism: Moving from Manga to Real People

My main style is Manga. I started two years ago, and haven't stopped. I've always wanted to get even better with my art, and one of my options is realism; drawing from figures and photos.
Here is a drawing I did from looking at a photo, my 3rd ever attempt at realism instead of manga, and I did NOT get her nose right

Mom noticed this even before I pointed it out, and decided I should sketch a full page of realistic noses, which, I did. Every bit of knowledge gives a certain kind of power, and learning to draw from real life will give you the ability to put more expression and 'life' into my manga art.
Here is a picture of a friend I drew from memory before the above picture, making it my 2nd attempt at realism:

It is from memory, and my 2nd drawing from real life, and so it's not very accurate and the eyes are a little tipsy, along with many other problems, but in drawing it, I was able to take another step in becoming better both as a manga artist, still life artist and an artist that specializes in realism.
I was going to show you guys my first-ever 'real' human drawing, which, again, was me in the mirror, but I couldn't find it.
However, here is my sheet of noses:

My destination isn't really a destination but a road, one that continues on. I have a long journey ahead of me, but since I've taken the first steps, it's that much shorter.

Manga Chibi Proportions

So, I'm just gonna drop this picture of Chibi proportions here and then if you want, you can just look at it and skip my commentary bellow.

So from the first one, we see that Chibi's, mine, at least, are generally three heads tall; also, that I usually keep the torso and the legs equal lengthes.
In the second, I drew a girl and a guy. The guys are usually taller than the girls, and to do that by lengthening the guy's torso, and making the girl more compact. Also, girls are rounded, and have curves while the guys are plain rectangles.
The third is just a side view; which I think is important because your chibi's don't want to stand one way all their life!
And the 4rth is simply how I map out Chibi face proportions.

10 min sketch clean-up

Just a little exercise I did and I think you should do it too. For 10 minutes I just drew freely, and so scribbles were born. Then, I traced it and turned it into proper line art. But the act of letting myself scribble really helped free up my artist's muscles, and though this one didn't turn out really nice, it was the gate way to unlocking better art.
Note that my perspective sucks and I'm well aware of that. xD

I took out the extra stuff because I couldn't figure out the perspective very well, so they made the picture look a little weird. I miss my umbrella though. Maybe I'll put it back in later. :)

An Artist's life has Obstacles

Far from being a helpful post, I'm just making excuses. As an Artist, I love drawing. I cram it into all the extra crannies of my time; except when I don't have time. October is one of my busiest months, with my job, household duties, school and my job as a dance instructor. So I have no crannies left right now! But when I do, I'll give you several art-filled posts. :)

A flower I drew when I first started using digital art programs.

Creating your own manga character

This is going to be a short post; I've been busy at work lately and don't have a lot of time on my hands. I just want to make a few pointers in this post, and for that, I'll be using one of my own characters.

This is Markus. He was inspired by the Zestria game, so I designed him to be able to fit right in as a water Seriphim, like Mikleo.
When creating your characters, you need to give them at least 3 defining characteristics, whether these are props, clothing or physical features. For Markus, his costume is pretty much elaborate enough to distinguish him from everyone else, but my favorite 'definers' are his blue feather earrings( okay, fine, black in the picture) and his double-bladed staff.
So always give them something different.
Also, while making them different, they need to be simple, or original enough, so that you can duplicate them many, MANY times.
If everyone is wearing school uniforms or the like, make sure your MC has a hairstyle that stands out from the rest. I'm not saying it has too be super spiky or anything like a lot of Manga MCs, just different. maybe make the others spiky and your MC's smooth.
Those are the two biggies. Other than that, just don't copy too much; This is yours, you want it to be you. Take what inspired you, Zestiria, in my case, and change it to look 'you.' Or just copy from many different places and mesh it all together... Kind of the same thing, really.

All the things in The Sky

I was challenged to create a post titled... well, the above, and to find a way to make it relevant... Still not sure how to do that.
Clouds. Clouds, I thought, that's what I'll do. So... Here is my Zendoodle cloud pic for Inktober of all the things in the sky...

 I know... It's random and doesn't have anything to do with manga...

The Tales Of Zestiria

The new Tales game, Tales of Zestiria, will be released the 20th of this month! I am definitely not ashamed of doing everything in my power( or the Internet's, at least) of finding out the plot and backstories of the characters. xD
Here are a few sketches I did of Sorey and Mikleo from the Tales of Zestiria game:

The Tales of Zestiria... Yeah I know I spelled it wrong

Mikleo

My favorite characters are Sorey, Edna, Rose and Mikleo But by far.... Mikleo's my favorite. I don't really know about this drawing here, he just seems to be the type who'd play chess. :P I hope to get around to doing some digital art for both Sorey and Mikleo.

Mikleo, Tales of Zestiria

The Drawing Challenger

1. Someone on their ipod
2. A Zestria character
3. A character from the last thing you wrote, fictional or not
4. Someone eating... Fish?
5. A couple on the mountain, hiking
6. A boy in the woods, doing a woodsy thing like carving, or hiking
7. The last friend you talked to
8. A scene from a manga drawn how you would do it
9. A girl on a swing, being pushed by a boy
10. Someone drawing
11 .A person who just brought out freshly baked cupcakes
12. A Gothic character
13. Someone you admire
14. A ballerina on point
15. A little kid trying to get something off a counter
16. A centaur
17. Your angry face
18. Your hands
19. Someone riding a chicken
20. A boy playing an instrument

So I made this list because I was bored, and I'm going to use it for the next two weeks or so. This is how it works: I'm going to number a bunch of pieces of paper and fold them up and place then in a plastic bag I can carry in my pencil case, and when I get bored I'm gonna select one of these pieces of paper and whichever number I pull, that's what I'll draw.
This is an exercise I'm doing so I can draw even when I don't feel like it and I thought you guys could do it too. :D

Chibi poses 1

Here are two sheets of Chibi poses. Chibis are a staple of all manga and are a lot of fun to draw, but a great deal of manga artists just draw them standing around in the same 'cutsie' pose they learned to draw them in. They don't branch out. I make comics with them, so  I need to draw them in all kinds of positions. So the first page is full of kind of dramatic chibi poses, like leaping, sword fighting, Running, Ballet etc.
The next has 9 chibi poses of ordinary things that pretty much everyone does that, like sitting, calling on a cellphone, typing and drinking water( everyone does that right?).
I hope these two sheets will give you an idea of how to change your stationary chibi's into active heroes; to make you go beyond what I've drawn here and draw some of your own poses.

Inktober

Hey guys! Inktober started yesterday! It's an event where, for every day of October, you create an ink drawing. You could use actual ink, ink pens or ink markers- Just as long as it's ink. For the whole story, visit this website, mrjakeparker.com.
I've seen my other artist peers participate, but I've never done it myself, so this will be my first time! Here is my second Ink drawing for Inktober, which I whimsically called 'First Snow.'

Even if you don't feel you're artistic, you can just do a doodle for inktober; and you don't have to do it every day either! you could do it every other day or at least on weekends. I really hope you participate too, just because it's a good exercise( and fun too)!

#Inktober

Ink Pen Scribble

Just a doodle I drew in history today of the Greek god Janus after I completed my reading assignment. Though my ink pen drawings never quite have proper proportions, they always seem to inspire me with their flaws.