Nezuko from Demon Slayer (鬼滅の刃) is everyone’s favorite village girl transformed into a demon. She wears a bamboo gag to stop her from eating humans and her eyes have turned pink in demon form. Today we will go over how to draw Nezuko together.
We can draw Nezuko in four stages:
- identify the three major visual characteristics of Nezuko that must be found in your final drawing
- break down the original sketch into simple loose forms and make sure you account for perspective, proportion, and composition
- complete a careful line art drawing of Nezuko on top of the sketch
- identify main colors that help Nezuko’s character become so memorable and make sure to represent these colors in your final work
When drawing a character, we must first identify their strongest visual characteristics, at least the top three, and make sure these characteristics are represented strongly in our final work.
I noticed that to me, Nezuko’s strongest visual identifiers are 1) the bamboo gag, 2) her pink demon eyes and 3) her long black hair that turns orange past her elbows. Keep these three visuals in mind as we will need to make sure they are represented in our drawing.
I decided on a very basic composition, focusing on Nezuko’s face and flowing hair. Let’s keep with our rule of thirds (since it is easy to remember), – in the base sketch stage I focus on three things:
- Composition. When working on composition, I ask questions like: is the composition engaging, does it help communicate the character’s strongest visual characteristics?
- Proportion. When working on proportions, I ask questions like: am I representing the proportions of the character in an authentic way? (Is the hair long enough, is the head to body ratio correct? are the eyes represented authentically in regard to size? and so on).
- Perspective. While drawing perspective I look for the following: are there any errors in perspective? Is the hair palpable in 3D space behind Nezuko, does her outfit fit in a logical way under this angle? and so on).
I wanted to include the silhouette of the bamboo gag since it is a big visual for Nezuko’s character. (A character’s silhouette is a powerful and memorable tool that helps convey a character’s story). To do this, I moved her hair back as if it is being blown back by the wind.
As you can see in the original sketch (top left), I kept the lines very lose. The sketch does not have great (or even okay) line quality. But that is okay, since I wanted to focus on the composition and the pose in the early stages. I knew that I will use the sketch as an underdrawing, and there will be plenty of time to create better lineart of Nezuko later.
Here is a breakdown of the original sketch (on the right), then the final line art (in the middle), and the shading breakdown (on the right).
Once I was okay with the original underdrawing I prepared for Nezuko, I created a new layer and set the original layer underneath to 20% transparency (I use Photoshop to create this drawing but any digital painting software should be able to do the same thing. I wrote a guide on top digital apps for artists, you can check it here if you want to know more).
On the new layer, I began a more careful line art drawing of Nezuko. In this step, I was much more considerate of the line quality and overall shape language of the drawing.
In her demon form, Nezuko has fair skin, pink demon eyes with long eyelashes, and long black hair that turns orange past her elbows. She wears a pink kimono with a red and white checkered obi. The obi is topped off with a green band tied around the waist.
I started by coloring in the hair and the eyes to give the rest of the color some context.
One important thing to notice since we are going into coloring our line art of Nezuko: if at this stage, you are not happy with the drawing, no amount of coloring is going to solve the drawing for you. It is much better to go back and start over.
I did not make any major corrections to the lineart once I entered the coloring stage of the drawing. Small adjustments are okay, but if you see a major issue that you need to fix, it is best to get back to the lineart drawing and fix it at that stage.
Then I begun to add flat colors to the rest of the image.
Since orange tips of Nezuko’s hair is one of the top three visual identifiers for this character, I tried to frame the shot in a way that I could still include the orange tips.
Here is an image with all base colors complete (see above).
I amplified the colors with a Photoshop image adjustments (hue/saturation, curves, color balance and selective color).
Above is the final variant with colors further edited. In this final stage, I wanted to make sure that Nezuko’s bamboo gag, eyes, and hair are clearly the focus of the drawing.
Once I was all done, I played around with the colors a bit more, and also made a slightly less saturated color variant of Nezuko (see above).
For your drawing of Nezuko, try following the same steps we discussed above:
- identify the three major visual characteristics of Nezuko you want to carry over to the final drawing
- break down the original sketch into simple loose forms and make sure you account for perspective, proportion, and composition
- complete a careful line art drawing on top of the sketch
- identify main colors that help Nezuko’s character become so memorable and make sure to represent these colors in your final work
That’s it! Hope you enjoyed this guide on drawing Nezuko! It is now time for you to get to drawing your own version!
