Lou (Mika Pikazo's Style)

Lou, character belongs to Illousteri @ Instagram

It's the end of college, but I still have a lot of assignments left to complete before graduation. Today and yesterday, I'm having a break from my studies to at least share one of my favourite assignments I've been working on since November!

It all started in mid-October during the second term of the course and I was given my final drawing assessment to create a poster design on any art movement. However, my teacher is open to students drawing in a particular art style such as anime and manga before I prepare a mood board and let the teacher know beforehand. My teacher recognised my unique style during my progress and suggested doing a different style than mine, but he's open to me drawing in Mika Pikazo's art style.

While searching for image references for the mood board, I realised I don't have an original female character that would make it believable as one of Mika Pikazo's works, so I asked any one of my fans on my Instagram story if they would like me to draw one of their characters as an art style challenge and my assignment. I ended up with three volunteers, but it was still difficult to pick whose character I'd end up drawing. Eventually, I picked Illousteri's OC, Lou because their character has triadic colours that I can work on without alternating the original colour palettes of their design.

The rest of the three weeks were life drawing lessons until the 9th of November, the first three days of working on the illustration, based on one of my life drawings or other image references. I ended up drawing a coloured sketch of Lou during my bus trips to college, took a photo on my phone and began my first 3 hours in class.

---

On Day 1, I brought my laptop and graphic tablet to class, but my laptop doesn't have the software I use to record for speedpaints.

After the first hour and thirty minutes, I asked my drawing teacher for critiques since he hadn't said anything about mine. I lacked confidence that I'd finish it in time, but he told me he was confident and believed that I'd do fine.

My teacher suggested changing Lou's pose to be more dynamic because her arms are too symmetrical, despite using one of my life drawing poses, it makes sense after seeing most of Mika Pikazo's works. He also mentioned he likes the character design and I let Illousteri know while showing them my work of progress.

On Day 2, 16th of November, I unfortunately began to feel sick with the flu for a whole week, but I was very stubborn and wanted to attend my favourite class I refused to skip. During class, I searched for new references for the new pose, but I never got the exact pose I needed and left Lou's left arm for last. I ended up working on the facial details before wasting time on Lou's hair, which became overly detailed and out of proportion.

My teacher helped me by suggesting the use of Illousteri's character sheet to match the shapes of her hairstyle instead of going over each strand of hair. Before I do, I only manage to draw a quick sketch of Lou's new hair so I can continue it next week. I also made a public notice on my Instagram story that I'll be inactive for the rest of November due to overwhelming amounts of assignments to finish before the end of the course.

On Day 3, 23rd of November, I managed to attend class despite I was still sick and couldn't speak for a few days. I didn't make any progress during my absence, so I had to change my expectations and cut it simpler to save time. I fixed Lou's hair from my previous sketch and added a watery wind with forget-me-nots to at least make it up to the plain red background.

My teacher was fine with students not replicating the art style to the T and he was cool that I could keep my shading style for the clothes, not using the exact tools the original artist used and keep the lineart so far, despite I tried my best making it thin as possible.

Sadly, I didn't finish my work during my last drawing class, but my teacher was nice to give me an extra day to complete my assignment before he marked it due to my situation. He also informed me when he's available to deliver the physical copy of the finished version with one image smaller on the side as the pose reference. I didn't use one pose and literally turned all the pose references I used into "one image".

Before the extra 9 hours, after the drawing class ended, I didn't attend my next class and reported to my teacher that I was leaving early because of my sickness. Despite the truth that I fell more unwell in the computer classroom, little did anyone know that I travelled all the way back home just to finish the final illustration for the rest of the day and night, almost non-stop.

Ever since I couldn't find the right pose for Lou's left arm, I decided to take a photo of myself and use it as a reference (with my face covered by my iconic silly doodle of Gaster). To save time, I imported many past digital drawings I made to use them as a collage texture for Lou's hair. I also added them for the ruffs because one of my classmates immediately recognised the lineart for it was definitely in my style, so I hid the obvious with more collages.

On the last hour, around 2 AM on the next day... I added the final gold details I could possibly add and made Lou's eyes more blue with glowy white highlights. My only regret is the background should have been a vibrant blue instead of red because her blue hair was replaced by my collage textures, leaving blue almost non-existent.

---

For the made-up poster design, the jacket's inner colour was changed back to yellow instead of blue so the results would end up looking with 60% red, 30% yellow and 10% blue. For the illustration version, I leave it blue so it helps draw people's eyes down with the flow of scattered flowers. However, even when I'm writing this post, I keep going back and forth on whether blue or yellow was the right choice because either one is fine in their own way.

Feel free to let me know if blue or yellow is better!

After everything, I have mad respect for my drawing teacher, Barry and he became my favourite art teacher I didn't have back when I was trying to get my high school certificate. He's taught me some valuable life lessons and even cool to allow displaying my online alias on my work instead of my name, respecting my privacy.

I also sent the original Photoshop file (without my signature and watermark) as a gift to Illousteri for permitting me to use their persona, Lou for my assignment. They also approved the credit placement in the poster design before allowing my teacher to display it in the cabinet for my college's yearly exhibition, and possibly still be there until the end of next semester!

The exhibition at the 6th of December and is mainly held to display students' works from higher course levels, but I appreciate my teacher displaying his classes' work since he's actually a part-time teacher who teaches other small courses and my current course level of graphic design.

Even though it's the end of my course, I'm still visiting my college to attend the last study session to finish my assignments before my extended deadline. Afterwards, I'll get the chance to look around the entire campus of the exhibition of other people's works and see what the next level course would be like.

External Links: Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter