Join the circus!

This drawing is proof to me, that I should always do a decent pencil drawing before I start with vectors. Below you can find some parts of the process. The pencil drawing there isn't even the original one, it's already warped into acceptable proportions. Half way through I almost wanted to throw the drawing away, but then I just let it sit there for a while and got back to it later. That is after I bought this beautiful and quite inexpensive Erte artbook, I think the influence definitely shows. Now I'm pretty happy with it, I like it best of the series ( 1, 2).

guy with orange jacket

OMG I drew a guy!!!111eleventyone!
I've been really discriminating against male drawing subjects, they always turned out not even half as good as when I drew a female. So now I decided to face my problem instead of avoiding it, I've been doing a lot of sketching with and without reference and here is the first result I'm happy with. There will definitely be more in the future.
I know I'm not the only one with that problem, I think it's rather strange: almost all male artists draw both male and female figures, while a lot of female artist draw girls almost exclusively - but there is also this interesting development how more and more teenage girls are into Yaoi and draw only men/boys.