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[Fanart] Pan Zi, for August, DMBJ - Wu Xie's Private Notes, artist freetalk
Title and link: Pan Zi for August
Fandom: 盗墓笔记 - 南派三叔 | The Grave Robbers' Chronicles - Xu Lei
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Character: Pan Zi
Additional Tags: Fanart, Hot man shooting arrows, now he's on a horse, traditional art, bows & arrows,
Summary: Pan Zi, with his hair flowing in the wind as he rides through the steppe, firing arrows into the sunset.
This piece was done for the 2026 DMBJ Gents calendar. I had signed up for Pan Zi for the month of August, and Bai Haotian for May.
When I signed up, the latest DMBJ series hadn't aired yet. My initial plan was for Ultimate Notes' Pan Zi, with his thick arms and protective eyes watching over a baby wu Xie. Then I calculated the timelines and Wu Xie would have probably been older than 7 when Pan Zi came into the Wu household, which put some ice on my plans.
Then the first season of Wu Xie's Private Note aired, and I was immediately smitten by this new Pan Zi (and by this Sanshu, curse him for being multifaceted and worn down and hot).
From there, I knew I had to show WXPN's Pan Zi showing off his arms, because, look how beautiful he is. People on a DBJ server mentioned Pan Zi on a horse, and this poignant image became my prompt. The character is strong and solid, so I wanted a dynamic but balanced composition.
I wanted this piece to be physical, whereas the Bai Haotian piece would be digital. My free time is very limited, and few of those stolen moments time give me access to computers. Having a digital and a physical pieces to work at in parallel would allow me to maximize any available time.
I made a couple sketches on paper.
I chose a piece of cardboard backboard (the one at the end of a lined notepad) as canvas, because it is a good backpack friendly size and I have a small pile of them collected. Full of confidence, I re-drew my sketch directly on the board...
...And immediately disliked it. (facepalm)
That foreshortened arm had to go flat, and his torso was too short, and the horses needed a bit more neck. D:
Now, that's all great, but the cheap cardboard had gotten grooves just from the sketch and wouldn't take kindly to several trial-and-errors. DDD:
What I needed was to select a couple segment and shifts them pixels to the left, but on paper. So I did what we traditional artists used to do before we could take 3 months to torrent the first Photoshop in the 90s: photocopy the sketch, print it, cut it up, stick it back together and fill the gaps.
Complete with also-printed reference pictures of Mongolian horseback archery techniques.
Now, this horse looks much better!
Next, I needed to duplicate the lineart on a new piece of cardboard. I taped a recycled sheet of carbon paper beneath my new patchwork, sat on the floor during my kids' sports events, and traced it down.
Now I was left with this, which might look identical to the first one but was, for me, a massive improvement.
This one I filled out using my lightest pencil, trying not to dent the cardboard.
That portable box was a pain and a half to understand from the dark screenshots, but I am satisfied with what I ended up with.
Then comes the inks! using 0.3 and 0.5 nibs for these clear lines. That horse looks ready to make an ad, I love her.
The cool think about using this cardboard as canvas is that it provides a grey-brown background. It allows both building up lineart variations with black pens and adding white accents with a white gel pen and a white wax crayon. The forearms veins where very important to me, for thirst reasons.
I also had the challenge of keeping Pan Zi's face as lively as I did the horse's, not to let her steal the whole art. ;)
My power was cut a couple times during this period of time - some of these times were planned, some were due to storms - so I was glad to have a physical fanart to work on. It saved me from using up my laptop's battery. Once the kids were in bed with their own lamps, I made myself comfy in nooks with my Moon lamp on my lap and build up the shading.
This one was made with a ballpoint pen, varying the pressure of the strokes to built up a grainy grey-black crosshatch. It's requires a bit of practice to get used to how much pressure to use, but is one of my favourite affordable art trick and is so soothing to do! This horse turned out to be a beauty.
We are getting there! I found the background lacking next to the details of the horse and figure, but there's only so much shading one can put in a black and white sky using inks.
So I switched it up! I chose a limited but bright colour palette instead. The figures in the foreground were clear and detailed enough that having a bright, colourful background wouldn't pull all the viewer's attention away from the subjects. The vibe was very "straight out of a romance cover". My main drawing tools are inks and watercolours, but this type of cardboard doesn't take well to watery pigment; it absorbs unevenly and dulls most hues. For that reason, these colours are coloured pencils, and the sun is white paint.
And here is the final shot! :D ARMS, horse, hair!
Wallpaper-like size available here: 2180 x 1744 (4Mb)
I hope you've enjoyed this little behind the scene! Thank you for reading along. <3
I'm not sure whether I will do Bai Haotian's, so let me know if you are interested.
Fandom: 盗墓笔记 - 南派三叔 | The Grave Robbers' Chronicles - Xu Lei
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Character: Pan Zi
Additional Tags: Fanart, Hot man shooting arrows, now he's on a horse, traditional art, bows & arrows,
Summary: Pan Zi, with his hair flowing in the wind as he rides through the steppe, firing arrows into the sunset.
This piece was done for the 2026 DMBJ Gents calendar. I had signed up for Pan Zi for the month of August, and Bai Haotian for May.
When I signed up, the latest DMBJ series hadn't aired yet. My initial plan was for Ultimate Notes' Pan Zi, with his thick arms and protective eyes watching over a baby wu Xie. Then I calculated the timelines and Wu Xie would have probably been older than 7 when Pan Zi came into the Wu household, which put some ice on my plans.
Then the first season of Wu Xie's Private Note aired, and I was immediately smitten by this new Pan Zi (and by this Sanshu, curse him for being multifaceted and worn down and hot).
From there, I knew I had to show WXPN's Pan Zi showing off his arms, because, look how beautiful he is. People on a DBJ server mentioned Pan Zi on a horse, and this poignant image became my prompt. The character is strong and solid, so I wanted a dynamic but balanced composition.
I wanted this piece to be physical, whereas the Bai Haotian piece would be digital. My free time is very limited, and few of those stolen moments time give me access to computers. Having a digital and a physical pieces to work at in parallel would allow me to maximize any available time.
I made a couple sketches on paper.
I chose a piece of cardboard backboard (the one at the end of a lined notepad) as canvas, because it is a good backpack friendly size and I have a small pile of them collected. Full of confidence, I re-drew my sketch directly on the board...
...And immediately disliked it. (facepalm)
That foreshortened arm had to go flat, and his torso was too short, and the horses needed a bit more neck. D:
Now, that's all great, but the cheap cardboard had gotten grooves just from the sketch and wouldn't take kindly to several trial-and-errors. DDD:
What I needed was to select a couple segment and shifts them pixels to the left, but on paper. So I did what we traditional artists used to do before we could take 3 months to torrent the first Photoshop in the 90s: photocopy the sketch, print it, cut it up, stick it back together and fill the gaps.
Complete with also-printed reference pictures of Mongolian horseback archery techniques.
Now, this horse looks much better!
Next, I needed to duplicate the lineart on a new piece of cardboard. I taped a recycled sheet of carbon paper beneath my new patchwork, sat on the floor during my kids' sports events, and traced it down.
Now I was left with this, which might look identical to the first one but was, for me, a massive improvement.
This one I filled out using my lightest pencil, trying not to dent the cardboard.
That portable box was a pain and a half to understand from the dark screenshots, but I am satisfied with what I ended up with.
Then comes the inks! using 0.3 and 0.5 nibs for these clear lines. That horse looks ready to make an ad, I love her.
The cool think about using this cardboard as canvas is that it provides a grey-brown background. It allows both building up lineart variations with black pens and adding white accents with a white gel pen and a white wax crayon. The forearms veins where very important to me, for thirst reasons.
I also had the challenge of keeping Pan Zi's face as lively as I did the horse's, not to let her steal the whole art. ;)
My power was cut a couple times during this period of time - some of these times were planned, some were due to storms - so I was glad to have a physical fanart to work on. It saved me from using up my laptop's battery. Once the kids were in bed with their own lamps, I made myself comfy in nooks with my Moon lamp on my lap and build up the shading.
This one was made with a ballpoint pen, varying the pressure of the strokes to built up a grainy grey-black crosshatch. It's requires a bit of practice to get used to how much pressure to use, but is one of my favourite affordable art trick and is so soothing to do! This horse turned out to be a beauty.
We are getting there! I found the background lacking next to the details of the horse and figure, but there's only so much shading one can put in a black and white sky using inks.
So I switched it up! I chose a limited but bright colour palette instead. The figures in the foreground were clear and detailed enough that having a bright, colourful background wouldn't pull all the viewer's attention away from the subjects. The vibe was very "straight out of a romance cover". My main drawing tools are inks and watercolours, but this type of cardboard doesn't take well to watery pigment; it absorbs unevenly and dulls most hues. For that reason, these colours are coloured pencils, and the sun is white paint.
And here is the final shot! :D ARMS, horse, hair!
Wallpaper-like size available here: 2180 x 1744 (4Mb)
I hope you've enjoyed this little behind the scene! Thank you for reading along. <3
I'm not sure whether I will do Bai Haotian's, so let me know if you are interested.
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Really loved reading about your process, too. Thank you for sharing!