Anyone who isn't new to my art, knows that im on the ArtClub discord, and also knows that we do funny challenges that result in... interesting results... such as fairy bob the builder here from March last year...

... yep, very interesting results. So this time we had the wonderful idea that we take a piece of clothing and an OC and then bung that clothing piece on the OC.

So we had a few suggestions, but this absolutely adorable hoodie from Redsy just stuck with us, meaning it was the choice for out collab:

And immediately as I saw this I thought to myself "I gotta choose the most not-gay, buff, male OC I own, who's also hella hot" ... in other words, I just described Cevrond.

(this dude here:)

Why I chose him and not one of my queer boys? Well, I has a fun idea for a mini-comic at the end of this that wouldn't work if the dude in the hoodie wasn't straight... but in the meantime I don't find the idea that good anymore so that minicomic is never gonna happen... but at least you get to see Cevrond in a cute hoodie ^-^"

Welp, I did my usual sketch thingies. The idea was, that he got this random hoodie, thought "hah, imagine if i actually put that on" ... and then for the fun of it just put it on and realised that it actually looks hella cool on him...
So he's in the bathroom for the next 15 minutes posing around in front of the mirror, until his roomie comes in after training and just is all like: "what the actual fuck, cev"
(this wasn't the idea for the comic tho... just so you know... but now that I've written that down... i might even doodle that sometime soon... dang...)

So I had to give him a nice littel show-off pose and I chose this one:

And after I doodled that, I felt the unexplainable urge to try lineart and cell-shading again. So I lowered the opacity and instead of my rough sketch-lines I used my line-brush and started on this:

It took me years and then I stared at this. And I was so fed up, that I thought "okay.... arms and hands are the most difficult of it all, just start with the colours for today and finish it up tomorrow".

So that's what I did... I started the colouration, which sucked. Because I couldn't be messy, since the lines were so clean... and of course I couldn't just use the fill-tool because my lines are non-continuous. It sucked, but I sturvived. Because we all know I just wanted to start with the cell-shading.....

Welp, I started with the clothing, because I was scared of the skin.

Dang guys, even though I haven't done this in years, this was so much fun and I still remembered how most of my techniques went, even though I changed a lot up after binging "looji" on YouTube... her art influenced my clothing a lot... overall she's an artist I really admire... but yeah!

So I finally dared to start on the skin, and came about this far until I finished for the day and... well lost the motivation.... so I abandoned the piece...

... UNTIL said wonderful artist (>>cough cough<< looji >>cough cough<<) uploaded this video and my admiring arse desperately wanted to try out that hair-shading technique...

https://youtu.be/Tz-uCyuCZS8

So I was about to start a new drawing, when I remembered that old WIP from October. So I used copied the files, deleted the colouring and merged lines and sketch together, to create something like a sketch for me to use for the new sketch.
My style has changed quite a bit since that last drawing, and I also got a better understanding of Cev's facial features.
And whilst this drawing looks a bit very weird, I knew that it would be easily fixed with the shading... so sketch and lineart do indeed look a bit creepy >w<

....

this should be the moment in which I admit, that I am a traitor... because I realised something very crucial some time ago: doing Lineart in Krita sucks. But it sucks less in PainToolSai.

Yes. Yes, I abandoned my beloved drawing programm for Sai2, to do the Lineart...

(I'm so sorry Krita, but it's just way smoother in Sai QwQ)

Anyways, I forced myself to do all the lineart this time, since I had to switch programms and not doing the arms would make everything a lot more difficult...

So now, that the lines were done and the only reason I picked this drawing up again was the hair, I could finally sit down and start the colouration.
I literally had the hair all done and shaded, before filling in any of the flats... but... DANG.... that was so worth it. IT'S SO SHINY AAAAHHHHH

And after I finished the hair, I went to bed. But the next day I arose, filled with every kind of motivation you could posibly have for a project like this.
So I decided to start with the skin, since this is how my usual workflow goes, if we take away the hair, and because I was hyped to experiment on my skin cell-shading.

So I started with a basic layer of light-purple shadows set on multiply... and OH BOY was it fun to think of shadows in clear shapes. This has been something I miss a lot when working with soft shadows, since you don't need to limit yourself to what sort of shadow you now wish to emphasize. Soft shading is more like sculpting, since shadows fall everywhere and you can raise and push back areas through values. Cell shading is not like that. You need to set priorities and need to focus on what shadows are necessary to express the threedimensionality of the piece, since highlights aren't as much a part of the workflow. At least that's the case for me.

(I also had super fun selecting that fist and adding a dramatic shadow on his cheek there.... pls realise that, because I constantly forget to add small details as such in my works.... >>proud of fist-shadow<<)

Now I went ahead and softened the shadows with an airbrush, whilst also adding a second shadow layer, together with his skin details and some highlights.
In the end I really really really like how the skin turned out, since you can still recognize my usual shading style in there a lot, even if I used a completely different technique.

Oh! And how could I forget to talk about the eyes and metal! The eyes were a lot of fun, since I personally like to add a lot of uunneasseassaarryy (i know that there are double-letters in that word somewhere... but I couldn't remember where exactly, so I just made everything a double-letter...... long live this absolutely necessary word... i hate typing you because I always get confused for some odd reason)..........

apologies for getting sidetracked >w<"

- since I personally like to add a lot of unnecessary details in the iris.
Other than that, the metal was extremely weird for me. I guess I had to redo all his piercings a couple of times, since I rely a lot on texture in my usual style. Now lacking that, the metal-master-psy was struggling a bit, but I think I did indeed get a metallic-looking result in the end ^-^

After I finished the skin and the detail-elements (inkluding the teeth... which i also forgot to mention... don't zoom in on those, they were a pain to shade and that is very visible), I moved onwards to his clothing. To be honest, the clothing was more of a struggle, than I expected it to be. Especially the arms of the hoodie were difficult, since I had to keep light source, folds and the arm below in mind.
But in the end I did indeed enjoy myself fighting through that and I am indeed happy with the result. I probably could've done a better job, but we always say that in retrospect, don't we >w<

So to wrap up the piece, I added some general lighting-overlays to emphasize the light source, as well as some rimlighting (which accidentally lead to him having a glowing arse.... and whilst I am indeed still very aroace and he is my child....... i don't really mind ¬ᴗ¬ )

So yeah. That was that... here's the finished piece ^-^

So that was that then, I guess. I really loved the drawing process of this one, especially doing some proper linework.... I usually always do a lot of lineweight wenn doing some pristine lineart, but it did have something very meditational to have everything extremely clean and monoweighted in the end....
What does that maybe mean for the future? I will do more cell shaded and linearted pieces! :D
The next one I planned will be a matching piece with Ruindîr in a similar Hoodie, so watch out for that >w<

>>gives you cookies, tea and a blanket<<
So whilst this chapter has indeed come to an end, I hope you stick around and wait for the next one! I'm always happy to read comments so don't be shy to start a conversation or ask a question about the character, artwork, or something completely off-topic ^-^