Drawing today's thumbnail 🎨

Process for today's thumbnail:

1) I sat in front of my screen from a min trying to figure out what she's going to look like and how she's gonna pose. I thought maybe have her lean on her hand like she's listening to the listener or being present with them.

2) I settled on having her lean on her hand. I searched "anime girl hand under chin" and found this. I sketched out something similar to the reference and did some very basic mapping.

3) Since the last ref was AI the hand looked awkward so I found another one.

4) I colored her in. I need to start writing down the shade names or at least creating a custom palette because her skin tone varies in every drawing since I just guess. It all looks the same to me until I'm finished lol.

5) I lowered the opacity of the skin so I can work on the features. I lower it so I can see the map that I drew earlier. I pulled up my last thumbnail since I liked it so much but I realized it wasn't giving me the result I wanted. Regardless, I kept the eyes the same for now.

6) Since she's facing forward I thought I'd ref this thumbnail but I didn't really use it. I added facial features here.

7) I pulled up 3 thumbnails that I wanted the vibe to match and changed the eyes slightly so she's looking forward and I changed the mouth completely. I also started shadowing here. I ditched the arm. Didn't like the pose.

8) I outline and colored the shirt. I chose a similar style to the ones on the left.

9) I searched for someone holding a book and referenced this image. I didn't really like the angle and didn't want the hand to cover the words though.

10) I find a different book image and completely redraw it. This angle allows me to not draw a hand since you can assume it's being held from the bottom.

11) I wanted to draw a hairstyle I've never done. I like blowouts and I've never drawn one so I initially tried to search for voluminous anime style hair but those don't look like what I was searching for. However, by searching that I found this great article on how to draw hair using a real picture. I used that as inspo.

12) I'm pretty satisfied with the shape of the hair so I color it black color.

13) I added some shadows and highlights + blush. Voila!

Nobody asked for this but I had fun showing the process last time so I hope you enjoyed :)