One of the biggest influences in my life, that touches both the motorcyclist and artist side of me, is Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira. I love both the manga and the anime and this was a tribute piece.
From rough scribble to cleaned up sketch. My original thought was that Tetsuo's arm spiraling towards the viewer would make a nice dynamic frame job. I also thought a 'Dutch angle' would work well with this composition.
I had fun throwing the "kitchen sink" into Tetsuo's arm!
For illustrations that do not retain their line work, I'll usually start off in grey tones to keep the separations and hierarchy intact.
I originally drew the hand on the left without any reference and didn't like the expression of it so I modeled my own hand and used that as reference. I think the distress comes through a lot more clear.
Prints available here: https://www.inprnt.com/gallery/richleedraws/tetsuo/
