I would like to share my history here because I simply couldn't find anyone to tell about what are the difficulties I had. Even my sister ignores my complaining. Here, if this interests you, please do read on. I really appreciate it.

To tell you frankly, I don't like art. Ever since I came into contact with colours during my childhood and all the way till high school, I'll never lay my hands on drawings, given that I don't have to hand in my artpiece as homework. What really rouses my interests in art is when I learn to read mangas. Clamp is the catalyst that makes the dead cells of art in me react. I was so engrossed in Clamp's drawings that eventually I started to imitate exactly to go about drawing their story characters.

I was quite proud of my so called 'artworks', and was feeling very satisfied. I never did colours, because of the fact that I do not know how to colour. If only I could turn back time, I would surely pay attention and practise colouring with paints. But this of course is impossible.

Next, I tried to create my own characters. It was disasterous. They all looked out of proportion, 'disfigured' and 'Egyptian-like'. I had drawn their faces too sharp and their eyes pointed like those of the Egyptian mummies. I laughed and rediculate myself from time to time at these 'infant' drawings. The questions popping out include: of how stupid I must be to ever draw such horrible art; is there anything wrong with my brain or hands to create these horrible 'people'; what a disgrace! Am I that incompetent at that time? and plus other imaginable curses and swears at these artworks. Go on and laugh. I'm laughing out loud enough now.

Then I stopped drawing. Why? I was simply to disgraced to draw a nice piece of picture. I decided that it is time to put aside my rediculous drawings and start to observe colours. What I meant is to observe closely how Clamp colours their characters, and taking note of the tones, shadings etc, as well as borrowing from the national library about water-colouring or painting techniques. I did some experimenting with my brushes, but they didn't turn out good. This is the first time I felt dispair. I am just struggling to like art. My brains tells me "Love it! You can do it!" but my heart says "Come on, what are you? Don't waste your time!" After much determination, I start to do the worst. Keep practising until I feel satisfied.

All right, let's start with the framework. Everyone knows that a general concept of how to bring about the whole picture is needed. In order to put across your idea and to present it in a way that is logical and pleasing to the eye, you must keep in mind the rules of manga drawings. If you have looked through Firewing, you will find that I had a very, very serious mistake made. I forgot to place a 3:5 gap in every cell. This makes the whole layout rather unproportional, and hence gives this illusion that the pictures drawn are too closed up. The overall presentation might be affected adversely if the rule is not followed. I can try to 'divert' readers' attention by decorating the cell with flowers, bubbles, or even overlapping so that it will look as if I had done it on purpose, and that I had 'lead on' the readers to think that way. It is very useful indeed, and bluffing your readers requires skills. Much much skills ^^ Oh, almost forgetting. Use IC screen as little as possible if you make this error. A plain, clear look is what you desperately needed.

The problem I have is that I HATE to draw flowers. To be more precise, I hate to decorate. This of course is very bad for people drawing manga. Try to love drawing flowers, not one, but many flowers. Also try not to stick to one choice. Choose a wide variety and put in the ones that you have a liking to (provided you don't mind drawing them).

Okay, enough of the framework. Next I'll discuss about the pictures to put in. If you have studied closely enough at my manga drawings, you will find that they are not exactly good planning of sequence. I always have this problem of 'what to draw next' and when I actually came up with one that I was quite satisfied with, the next thing that freezes my hand is that, I am stuck! What should be the next scene? I can't just throw whatever I think is more easier to draw for the next scene. The readers won't know what happened! For example, if I drew a scene where a thief got hold of a bag of gold, the next thing I want to show is that he had gone out of the room where he got the gold and along the way, how am I to draw the turnings and get out of the building? I just can't jump directly by drawing him outside the building; nobody will know why! There's no flow at all! Worse still, if I wanted the thief to discover something valuable along his way out and decided that he took that thing along with him as well, how am I to show that to readers?? Plentiful of scenarios can be imagined, but how to draw them down? I can't possibly draw them altogether, which may take pages. I must extract precisely the ones and lump the happenings in a single scene. Again, this requires skill.

Once you're used to good planning and layout, all will be easier and faster for to complete a manga. Next we go to the story. Try not to change the story as much as possible such that everything becomes so distorted that you are at a loss of what is your original story and the idea that you want readers to know. I often change my story so often (for easy drawing) and hence everything goes out of hand. I no longer control the story, but the story has gotten control of me. My ideas become restricted because the story simply rejects all possible arrangement of happenings that I want to draw. Perhaps you did not understand what I'm writing here (due to poor english, I guess =P) but if you ever encounter this problem you'll suddenly realise what I said do make sense. Anyway if you do not encounter such problems, congrats!You're handling things quite well, I should say.

The last but not least is the inking of the pages. Ha ha, that is what spoils my 'near satisfactory' manga drawings. Even if I drew the best drawing (to me), it will get spoilt by my inking. Think of how I cry at the destroyed beauty of my drawings. Seems like all efforts have gone into drain. I really HATE to use ink!!! However, if you have a flair in pen outlining / inking, good for you! You'll make an excellent manga artist! Try to use different thickness of pen to create different effects. For instance the boxes should be the thickest line followed by reducing the thickness from the near to the far end, or use very fine lines for delicate features etc. Oh, the drawing of lines to create special effects require patience and good skill. If the 'focusing' effect ( think you should know what I mean) is drawn with different thickness it really spoils the look of the overall appearance and readers may rate you as low graded with no skills at all and incompetent. I don't think anyone would like to be criticised. But I do get criticised now and then. Well, practice more, in that case. (Referring to myself)

This generally ends my discussion for manga drawing. Hope you enjoy reading! Thank you for reading to the end! Ta-ta!!