Welp, guess who's sitting in front of his computer at midnight, writing wattpad chapters, because he found a spider milimetres away from his face, whilst he was watching YouTube in bed? This dude.....

Ah, had a fucking heart attack there... but hey! Guess I'll just sit in the opposite corner of my room and not go anywhere near my bed for the remainder of the night :D

So suffer with me, through this heart-racing, overly exhausted written chapter, that probably has some terrible grammar errors and typos >w<""

Back to the reason you folks are actually here:
Sooo.... art-wattpad queen Redsy had another dtiys-challenge, and I decided to participate. Except that I missed the deadline... but I still drew the picture for fun, so, here we go, eh?

Challenge was, to redraw her piece for the prompt "star" in the monthly magical-girl challenge:

Honestly? Before she even hosted the "official" dtiys on watty, I already wanted to draw her in my style xD

She's just.... ah, too wonderful.

So I went ahead and made a few sketches for the pose, before ultimately settling on this mess right there. Initially I did indeed plan on drawing a girl, but when I started the drawing I didn't fancy figuring out female anatomy, so I went ahead with a genderbend.

The face was done fairly quickly. I tried my best to make him look a bit more feminine, whilst also having a bit of a rounder nose. I sketched in a ponytail, and twin-tails, but found, that whilst it did indeed differ quite a bit from the original, a man-bun looked the best with him.
Not too sure what it is on my manbun obsession, but hey! They look cool on characters, so why not roll with it.

The outfit was a lot trickier, since it is indeed a very feminine one. 

I decided to split the top in two halves, essentially having an undershirt that included the cutouts and the turtleneck, whilst adding another vest-leather thing with torso-belt for the star and added coolness-factor. Those initial plans rather quickly failed after that shirt just didn't want to look right... so have a sleeveless shirt instead >w<
Also, I think I forgot the belt later on when lining..... so that's that I guess.

Together with those sleeve-thingies at her wrist I added some golden bracelets for his upper arms, to make him look a bit more regal. I don't know why, but I kinda went with that vibe for most of the drawing.

I decided to simply turn the skirt, into a pair of trousers with golden stripes along the side, to sort of mimic the rim along the bottom. I also wanted to incorporate the socks within the trousers, with some awesome metallic effects.... hahaha... yeah that would've definetely been the better design choice.

The "belt" I decided to replace with a leather belt, matching the leather-thingy on the top, and having the line of pearls kinda floating around him, to add some extra motion and resemblance to the original.
Whilst the... uh... half-skirt thingy got split in two, as though it were the tails of a nonexistent jacket.

The shoes..... oh good lord the shoes are the worst part of this drawing, BY FAR. I went ahead and gave him these boots... but they just turned out so ugly... I deleted the sketch a gazillion times until I just gave up to put it in the sketch argh.... in the end I got a bit creative on that front to fix my issue and still ge the painting finished, but it still was a struggle.

The little wand seemed a bit too undramatic for me, so I blew it up into a staff, essentially just copying the original design and adding some sharper corners and little details to it, to make it look more magical.

And then it came to the lineart... and whilst things went south before, this is where the rollercoaster of "THIS IS NOT WHERE I WANTED TO GO" started, haha.... dang, I never should randomly design outfits directly on the drawing and instead just go back to planning everything out seperately.

But hey, I've already settled on the thought of redesigning him completely again, just for the sake of redemption, soooo...... look forward to that, I guess?

I decided, since Redsy has this blurry way of colouring eyes, to not give him pupils, and instead have his eyes glow a bit.... big mistake. Too distracting and makes the face look a bit unclear, dragging the attention towards the centre of the piece.

As I said before, I forgot the belt across the torso and probably was too lazy to add the wrist thingies, after struggling for ages on that hand. Otherwise I am indeed really really happy with the upper part of the drawing, even after the shading, everything above the belt (including that belt tho) turned out pretty darn neat!

It only got problematic when we came to the trousers and shoes.... and oh boy.... OH BOY.

The leg at the back was no problem whatsoever. I decided to turn the initial bottom part of the trousers, the socks in redsys picture, into some sort of armour, so I just had to draw the bottom part of the shoes. It took me quite a while until I got the shoe to a point where I just said "Fuck it, this is good enough. Who cares anyways, this was just supposed to be a smol sketch." and moved on to the next leg.
I struggled a lot on the folds, mainly just because I used the wrong reference.... yep, I do feel a bit stupid in retrospect >w<"  But yeah.... so noe it looks as though he were turnign his leg inwards kinda. It got even worse, when I copied the stuff from the leg at the back as a shape reference and just thought "Hey.... man, this could actually work just like that.... I mean.... it is indeed just a small drawing, so It should be fine."   .....  decisions were made and regretted...... a lot......
So now the shoe that's closer to the viewer is a bit wonky and the perspective is so wrong... argh, I hate it so much guys...

Completely ignoring my ringing alarm bells ... (artistic rendition below)

... I then continued on with the flats, trying to turn the bright yellows into more of a gold, whilst the blues are a more muted midnight or violet. I also decided to especially push the night-theme in that belt-fabric thingy through adding a slight gradient and a ton of sparkles ^-^
Hair and skin, turned more or less into just more muted versions of the original, colour picked and modified to match my style more.

I also had a bit of very much fun with the background, trying to mimick Redsys background and confining it to one circle, also adding some abstract stuff for.... aesthetic reasons, I guess. Still not too sure why I do them precisely, but I do love those random circles and lines >w<

So that's how that looked in the middle of the skin and hair shading.... I continued to go down that rabbit hole of terribleness.... as I said, everything above the belt was great, felt great, and (in my opinion at the time of this writing) also looks great!
Everything below can be thrown riiiiiiight into the dustbin. I tried to battle my terrible planning through some multiplies and gradients, but they didn't really help, to be honest.... also, WHY THE FUCK DID YOU USE FUCKING PURPLE DUDE?! GREY! USE GREY ON MULTIPLY, WHEN THERE'S SEVERAL, DIFFERENTLY SHADED COLOURS INVOLVED.

But alas, I probably was tired when colouring so... that's just how it is now, eh?

By far the highlight of this drawing was that staff though. I have no clue how long I spent on the shading of that thing, but I had the time of my life whilst working on that thing.

For the first time in my drawings I also went back on top with a yellow on luminosity, to add some detailed goldwork on top. This is a technique I usually use for my clothing designs, but I do indeed thing I could experiment more with that in my finished works.

Without further ado, here's the final for you!

So... whilst I do indeed hate the drawing enough by now to draw him again completely, I am indeed happy with the general vibe and the top half of everything. I just should practise drawing shoes honestly... fill sketchbook spreads with them, as I used to do with hands...

But yeah! Hope you guys like my interpretation of Redsys piece, it was indeed hella fun to try and interpret your drawing into a male figure, even though I totally fucked up them legs.... yes, I will not shut up about my failure, leave me alone.

>> gives you cookies, blankets and a cuddle with tea before heading out of the chapter <<