Morrigan Aensland: Painting with POSCA (Patreon)

This is a process post that was cross-posted to  my Ko-Fi earlier this year for donors, but I thought I'd share it this month with all of my new Patrons! This is a fun process that I'm having fun with in order to transfer my sketches on to canvas for painting in general, while also working with a new medium. I hope this breakdown also helps you!

This year I decided to give the gift of handmade, since my finances took a bit of a hit right before the holidays. And I made a little practice piece to play with a new medium I've been dying to work with for a long time. POSCA pens. I also had a ton of canvas laying around, so I thought, WHY NOT.

My muse whenever I can't think of what to draw ends up being Morrigan Aensland from Darkstalkers for whatever reason. Maybe it's her sensual allure, or her wild color palette. Either way, one of my go-tos and never suffers for inspiration.

Anyway, I thought I'd document my progress here for you guys to see, as it includes some pretty useful tips for transferring any sketch to canvas if you don't have a projector.

I started with a sketch:

Canvas, even if it's pre primed, is not a forgiving surface when it comes to graphite, so I wanted to make sure I got all of my mistakes on paper. A lot of erasing can leave a lot of smudges and hard to cover blemishes, as well as ruin the integrity of the primer. Paper is far more forgiving to work with. I haven't drawn a face on a larger scale in a long time, so I knew I was going to be doing a LOT of erasing. (I wasn't wrong. I think I erased her whole face like 2000 times. RIP)

After my sketch was done, I needed to transfer the sketch onto my canvas panel.

Since I didn't want my image mirrored, I had to do a couple extra steps. The first step was to cover the back of the paper with graphite. I used a graphite stick for this process, but a regular pencil will do. I only had a 2B graphite stick on hand, but I really wish I had a 6B. The numbers and letters on a graphite stick or pencil are an indicator of how soft or hard the lead is. HB is the "standard" lead, or the hardness of most pencils and mechanical pencils. But you want a softer lead for darker graphite coverage without bearing down too hard. 6B is a softer lead than 2B, and would allow for a better transfer.

After this process, my hands were completely covered in graphite. Womp womp. I also honestly should have bared down a little harder myself for darker coverage, but hey. Live and learn.

After I coated the back of the piece, I used some masking tape to tape the sketch to the canvas so it wouldn't move while I was retracing my lines. And then, I set about tracing over my lines of my sketch, making sure to use some pressure.

Tada! My canvas ended up being a little smaller than my sketch, so I had to do some cropping. Also, since I didn't make the graphite dark enough, I had to go over the lines again on the canvas to darken them up a little more to see what I was doing. Which ended up being a redundant step, as I had to lightly erase my lines as I was going with my kneaded eraser. (Which are a godsend tool I'm discovering. I used to underestimate a good kneaded eraser, but I'm coming to love them more and more)

And then I set to work painting.

Blocking out my flats.

And finally going back and blocking my "shading".

After cleaning up the black with a Sakura Micron bullet pen, I finished!

You can see the scanned and completed painting in my gallery. Thank you so much for reading this post, and supporting me on my artistic journey. I hope this was informative, too, and inspires you to create something fun of your own!

Materials used:
POSCA paint markers in size 5M
8x10 primed canvas board
8.5x11 in cardstock
HB mechanical pencil
2B graphite stick
kneaded eraser
and a lot of spite.

The original of this piece can be found for sale in my Ko-fi shop at https://ko-fi.com/heroicn0nsense/shop!