Kirby

I once read somewhere that drawing simpler things is actually more difficult then drawing something with more detail. The idea is that the more detail there is, the easier it is to hide flaws. There's more to distract the eye with. Whereas simple, open shapes and areas require lots of balance for them to look right.

Well, I can attest to that. x_x The other day I was asking my friend Matt "Hey, any suggestions what I should draw tomorrow?" and he sent me a YouTube video of the "How to draw Kirby" animation from the games, which made me laugh of course. XD But I thought, why not? Kirby is as simple a character you could ask for! Plus I have played many of the Kirby games for the NES and SNES and enjoyed them quite a bit (I even have Kirby's Air Ride for the Gamecube).

So I started drawing him, and immediately I started running into problems. I make cirlces with the ellipse tool for the body and then when I started working on the eyes that's where things went awry... though I was following the "formula" for drawing Kirby, no matter how I did it it didn't LOOK like Kirby. Then the insides of the eyes looked like some strange Kirby knock-off you'd find in a questionable dollar store. Then the mouth, then the arms - everything was becoming a problem and none of it looked the way it needed to!

Anyway... it took much longer then I thought it would. I've never been especially good at drawing stars either believe it or not (I actually have a star shape template I use for traditional pictures).

I wanted to make him Sword Kirby because A) I always liked sword Kirby because it was like playing as Link from Zelda, and B) because otherwise it would have been a very naked drawing. I think it adds a little more flavor. ^^

As for the shading, when I was adding the blush on his cheeks I thought it looked weird to make them with lineart. At first I used screentone, but that just make it look like he had freckles! When I added the gray I started shading other things - I think it gives it a more cartoon-y look which actually compliments Kirby alot I think. The "rainbow" was added for extra effect, though obvious if I ever colored it it would be a proper rainbow.

Anyway, Kirby belongs to Nintendo, but this drawing is done by me. Please do not use without permission.