Earthymoons Zakkiyah

*edit* Well, this isn´t really professional stuff, but I didn´t want to open an extra folder for only one picture, so I will show it here. I got some complaints about this picture not being perfect, so I thought I add this little explanation for those trolls who are too stupid to understand the following piece of text. *edit*

I am experimenting with people from different countries for quite a while in my sketchbook. Africa alone has nine different skin-types and tribal-specific body-features, due to the mix of different tribes/peoples during migration periods.

The major flaws of Manga in animé-style usually is the bad portrayal of different ages (you have young and old and nothing in between) and different peoples. They all look alike, especially when you take off their clothing and draw them with wet hair. So that´s what you are frequently seeing in my Kyoko-stories - Kyoko with different hairstyle, in different ages. I want her always to be recognised as Kyoko, no matter what she´s wearing or what her hair is looking like.
So human variety is a very important thing for me to study and to work on. When I came across this wonderful photo of Earthymoon´s friend Zakkiyah [link] I thought it would be a great reference to do some ethnical study - so I did this pencil drawing and to give it a warm touch, I gave it some sepia-filtering afterwards. I do not do her natural beauty justice and it´s only showing, that I still have a lot to learn.
Comment, if you like; usually I would put it into the scrap-folder, but I wanted to share it with you.

Size: 6"x10"; time: 2hrs all inclusive.

Pencils: 9B, 8B, 6B, 4B, 3B, 2B, HB, 2H, 3H & 4H; no use of eraser.

Thank you, Earthymoon for the marvellous photograph and Thank you, Zakkiyah for putting on traditional african hairdo and eye-makeup (which is phantastic on the original, by the way. I left it out, because I didn´t do it in colour and I would not have done it justice. Check it out, if you like!).