Coloring in pictures of Singapore

 

After coloring in pictures drawn by Westerners - foxes and cute woodland creatures in "enchanted" forests - it is a good change to work on pictures of home.

I came upon Dancing Streets (below), a coloring book by Gine Yeo, a Singapore architect, and bought it instantly. To do the drawings for this book, he had gone on several walking tours through the older and newer parts of Singapore - Chinatown, Capitol Piazza -  and in a twist, rendered them as though they were being looked at through fish-eye lens. The buildings stray from the ram-rod straight and curve crazily, hence the book title.

Yeah, it was a "Buy 1, Get 1 Free" deal. The other book I
got for free was also another with local (Asian) content.
But I'll cover that in another post.

The Chinese temple picture was the second picture I attempted in the book. I had felt challenged to render the door in a blazing red, after seeing pictures of Chinese temples with such bold doors. The decorative "cup" features on the door, in shiny metal, were also an invitation to try for a textural finish.

The door was the first thing I attempted in this picture, and the rest of the picture was mostly finished in an afterthought! The door took six shades of red, done mostly in trial and error. By the time the finishing touches were put to it, the surface of the paper was already very slick with wax. I had used three layers of Prismacolor's carmine at the base, just to build up the color. I then put a coat of permanent red for a richer hue, and used a combo of Tuscan red and crimson lake (both dark reds) for the shadows at the top and far edge of the door. Poppy red gave a brighter hue to the lighter areas.

The metal cups on the doors... I used bronze, gold and white, and a 90% warm grey for the shadows.