Nine Over Five Presents... Loki (MCU)

 The things you do when you're an insomniac...

 I'd been thinking about drawing Loki from the MCU for a while, so I just decided to go ahead and do it already, gosh.

 (Warning: this post was written while rather badly sleep deprived.)

 I wanted to draw him looking very smug and superior, and I decided that the best way to do that was to show him looking down his nose at the viewer.

 It was such an effective mental image, I wondered why I'd never seen other fanart of him looking like that.

 And then it came to me.

 The reason why I'd never seen it is because that angle is really hard to draw.

 Especially for someone like me, who prefers lines to shapes and values.

 Initially I tried using my own face for a basic idea of how it would look, but that... didn't turn out that well.

 I gave up at this point:

 The problem was that it was my face. Okay, a chinnier version of my face, but my face nonetheless.

 I look nothing like Tom Hiddleston. Which is a good thing in general (because it reduces the chances of inbreeding) but in this case, not so helpful.

Lots of jumpers, so many socks...

 So I scoured google images to find better reference to help me and I found the perfect picture.

 Here is a very long hyperlink telling you to go and look at this picture because it was so helpful. I mean, it was at almost the perfect angle to see what the planes of his face would be doing when tilting his head back. It wasn't centered, but I'm clever, I could work around that, and I did.

 Remember, I had that failed attempt, and although I didn't want to try and change that, it acted as a good guide to work in conjunction with that photo.

 Out of that, I got this:

 I was so happy with it when I was drawing it, but now I can barely stand to look at it...

 Ah, the curse of art.

 Anyway. With the sketch done I started working on the back ground and his hair.

A stage.

 First I coloured his hair, horns and collar with a PITT artist pen, and then I took two green Winsor & Newton inks and sloshed on the back ground.

The offending products.

 After that it was just a matter of doing shading with a black Polychromo and colouring his eyes with a couple of copics.

 Some highlights with a white gel pen later and he was done. Ready to unleash upon the world.

 Hide your stallions.

 Wow, am I in a love hate relationship with this one.