Paint A Fantasy Manga Portrait

Asia Ladowska puts aside her ink pens and markers, and embraces the digital painting process of a soft and colourful manga character

For this workshop I’m painting a beautiful manga character. My go-to tools are usually traditional media. I’m most comfortable working with ink pens, pencils and markers, and so I’m learning a lot when I’m painting with digital tools.

I have no idea what the end result will look like, so I’ll make sure to share in this workshop every important step and my thinking process, as well as why I make certain decisions that affect the final appearance of the character.

While painting colour concepts and experimenting with different palettes in the sketching phase, I was listening to music and believe it or not, the final colours of this illustration were inspired by a song. I heard the line, “Day gives way to night” and that’s when the deep red and blue sparkled in my mind. If not for the song and the feedback from ImagineFX I’m sure the girl’s hair would have ended up being pastel pink and blue (like the hair of most of my characters that I’ve painted digitally). It’s exciting to experiment with colours that I’ve never used together before.

So, prepare to meet Sunset, a happy girl that’s winking at you from the cover of my favourite art magazine!

1 Generating concept sketches

The brief I receive is pretty straightforward, with a lot of freedom for experimenting. I start by sketching some close-up shots of a woman in her 20s, making sure she’s looking at the viewer and that she’s smiling. I always make the expression of the character I draw myself, so the sketching process has left me in a really good mood!

2 Apply colour tests to the chosen sketch concept