Entering my First Compatition

I entered an online art competition on Instagram its the first time I have ever done any thing like this. Each week the Instagram account magnificent.art runs a competition with a theme and last weeks theme was Anime and manga. Now I have been a fan of anime since before it was called anime and on of my favorite series  in recent years has been bleach. so I figured lets have a go at drawing Ichigo.

I found a reference drawing for the pose on google images but he was wearing his hollow mask so i found other pictures of his face and practiced by drawing a close up version of his head and colouring it with pro-markers to get an idea of the colours I would need for the finished piece. I have posted my close up of Ichigos face on my Instagram account if you would like to have a look. Just follow the link on the left.

I got to try out a new pen that I had bought for the inking which was a Faber-castell Pitt pen with a brush tip. I like how it allows me to be able to vary the thickness of my lines in on stroke depending on how much pressure I apply and the angle at which I hold the pen. 

I bought a dark grey pro-marker especial to colour his clothes as I thought it would be better than just coloring the whole outfit in black which would have ended up rather flat.

In the end I posted the full version on the competition page 5 days before the deadline and received 182 likes and 2 comments which was a far cry from winning but was by no means the worst performing piece. 

I think I will enter more competitions on Instagram  its nice to expose my work to a larger demographic to see how it is taken and compare my work with others to see how I need to improve and where I am doing ok.

What do you think to my Ichigo drawing I think his face looks a bit odd especial around the mouth but I do like the pose.