Drawing Chandra

The inside story of my drawing process

Sep 19, 2025

Recently watched Lokah Chapter: 1 Chandra, and absolutely loved it. The world building, the characters, and above all, the visuals were stunning.

Since then I wanted to draw Chandra, the protagonist of the movie, played by Kalyani Priyadarshan.

Here's a step by step breakdown of the process

Step 1: Select the reference

Here's the poster i selected for my task, from twitter:

Step 2: Get the grid lines

I am not one to use Lewis method and all. I can't and don't trust it much. I am an engineer and I trust my Cartesian plane.

So I just went here to add grid lines to my poster reference: https://yomotherboard.com/add-grid-to-image/#google_vignette

You need to smartly align the gridlength

Step 3: Draw the lines on your paper

It's a lot of math and stuff but you'll get it. Pro tip: use set squares

Not too clean but approx it just works.

Step 4: Draw

Ah the first tough step. You need to be able to see the cutting points of the outlines on the grid lines, mark them, and connect them. Be good with the rough estimates. I look at half, one-third, and one-fifth levels of precision on each cell edge to figure intersection.

I also draw the light and dark shaded region contours for easy painting later.

Step 5: Try to erase the grid

Try is all you can do. Use thin eraser. I would cut my rectangular eraser into 2 triangles for sharpness.

Step 6: Water colours

I can't explain in detail on how to mix colours, find the right shade, and work it, cuz i don't wanna. Go to youtube for some starters and practice a lot. That's the way I learnt.

But it helps to add that I create my 50 shades of skin using Gamboge hue (yellow), Scarlet (red), ultramarine blue, and white.

I use a Camlin Artist watercolor cakes set. 18 colours.

Have tissues, they are your best friends.

I collect them as much as I can and stove them into my shelf.

Slight incline for nice colour flow. Useless here but for sceneries this is a nice method.

Step 7: Colour pencils for extra marks

The above image might look fine, but we aren’t there yet.

See how Pedro Pascal can make his way here into an art blog, too!

So we use colour pencils to game up.

Purple is a nice shade to make things dark. And maroon too.

Step 8: Editing the image

Real world and physical art are messy, so you need to add some digital touch ups and cleanups to make it near.

I mostly used google photos but then idiots removed the 4 point crop option lately so life's been a bit tough. Also magic eraser was great but not anymore.