Final Piece

Here is my final piece, a full body portrait. I've added both flips sides as I haven't decided which one I like the best, but I'll submit both just so you can see both sides.
There has also been some edits to the body while I was painting this which you can see at the bottom, most of the edit is on the right sided arm.
Overall, I am really happy with how this turned out like and if I had the time I would of done more scenes and have him interacting with other characters, but this still could be done in the future. I have learned a lot from this project and would love to continue on with this character in other personal projects.

References

These are the refs I took to try and get a better sense of how fabric works. I tried a few different angles just so I have more views and pictures to choose from.
Below are the original lines, the new lines I created using this refs and then the new lines in red on top of the old lines. Using these refs as helped me a lot with the line art of my final piece and in drawing fabric in general. I'm happy with how the final piece is coming together.

Final Piece Layout

Here are the sketches I made in the making of my final piece. I really wanted to get the body to work before I started adding cloth to it. I wanted there to be a twist in the body rather than having the character just standing there in a boring stance. I also thought about what I wanted this painting to say and as the character is so awkward, I thought he could hold up a piece of his garment in a sign of pure awkwardness, as if the viewer is the painter who's frustrated with him because he keeps doing random boring posing as this is the characters response with a "maybe if I hold this up they'll stop shouting at me and it'll be over soon..."

After talks with a few people, I was told to take it a step further and get my own referencing with the cloth and it looks a bit odd up at the shoulders, so this is my next step.

Final Character

Here is my final character design, tall and slim. As I've said before I like the contrast of this characters personality against him being a Cardinal. My next step is the beginning of my final piece.

Clothes designs

Here are the line art with the body underneath of some clothes designs and the colour blocked versions underneath. 

For this character I think that having him as a Cardinal would be a great contrast to his personality as he is a shy and nervous, good character whereas Cardinal's are seen as higher beings, surrounded by wealth and power. I think a final turnaround sheet is needed before I start my final piece, just to focus on the final character design. 

Hair styles

These are the side and front of my characters head, then I began to try out different hair styles. The one I think looks the best is the longest hair style, the others are too modern looking and I just don't think they suit the shape of the face.
Next I will begin to test out different outfits for this character.

Body sketches

These are some body types I was experimenting with, I'm wanting my character to have a tall and slim build so I gradually changed the body type until I was happy with the outcome. I want him to be slightly stretched as his whole design will be slightly stylised.
On the far right you can see some sketches I made before studying different body types, they are horrible and limp with no structure to them. Below them are two sketches I made after doing the different body. They're not perfect but they are considerably better than the one before!

Face variations

Here I've taken another one of my character sketches and did some face variations. I like how these came out like, just trying different things to see how this character could turn into. I think this characters face suits a more shy and scared personality rather than an angry one. I think I'm going to take this guy further and start to think about body types and clothes etc.  

Render Test

Here is one of the character sketches I took form my previous post, I did a profile view sketch and then a render test in the style I plan on having my final piece in. The style of the sketch and render do fit well together, if I changed the character to look less cartoony it would be great. Also this weirdly turned into an awful Benedict Cumberbatch painting which I did not intend at all! So obviously this design will be scraped.

Character sketches

Here are some character sketches, I aimed to have a variety of faces and used simple shapes to help me start off with each sketch. Some of these are in different styles like the sketches towards the left where they would be more suited to animation than a digital portrait.
I really enjoyed just doing little sketches like these, however I'm a bit worried about the style of some as I'm not sure they would suit/look right with the style of painting I'm wanting to do. Therefore I will pick on and do a quick render test and take it from there.  

Behance Comments

I didn't get many feedback comments on Behance but even just posting my wip online has helped my confidence a lot as I'm always scared and hate when people see my work when it's not finished or I don't like it myself, so this has helped me in the process of showing my work to other people.