Drawing fabric folds: a practice run

Sophie's birthday is round the corner, so her Godma decided to make a card to go with the bag of goodies. Godma figured she needed the practice and challenge of rendering fur and fabric. One can do only so many pages of coloring books drawn by other people!

I copied the drawing of a dreamy-looking mouse from a Pinterest post I saw, but the post was in black and white, so the color choices of the animal and clothing are mine. I used the black and white picture - and all its shades of grey - as reference for the subtle shades of the folds in the blue-denim overalls, red undershirt and yellow scarf.

I used my Derwent periwinkle blue and my lighter Prismacolor powder blue, as well as a 70% cool grey for darker areas of the denim. White was used on the tops of the folds catching the light, accented by ink from my white gel pen. The red shirt was done with a combo of poppy red (base color), Tuscan red and two shades of orange.

I also tried to make the mouse look furry. This entailed putting down a base color of light brown and then overlaying it with light strokes of darker brown and warm grey.

Godma is not entirely satisfied; this could have been better. Surely the way denim catches the light and the way cotton (I presume the red shirt to be cotton!) does it are different? This was all done only by observation and instinct. My copy of Colored Pencil Painting Bible arrived last week, but haven't had a chance to browse through it or use it for reference.

The lettering was hand-drawn and colored in with my Towbow Dual-Brush Pens.   I don't feel confident enough yet to hand-write using the pens, showing the characteristic thick-thin strokes of brush lettering.

Sigh, so many things to learn, so little time. Work always gets in the way. I still haven't tried out my Derwent Water Color Pencils!!

From vase to my drawing pad

I bought a bunch of orange orchids with red spots two weeks ago, and decided to try drawing a bloom.

Half done. 

Actually, the single bloom - already past its prime and detached from the stem - deteriorated really quickly, so I had to throw it out. But by then, I had already done two petals or so. I put the bloom into my flower press and continued drawing the other three petals, basically without a reference object.

I put a layer of yellow first on the lightly-pencilled outlines, then put in the deep red spots, using Crimson Lake from my Derwent Artists set. They were a test of patience, and I had to keep my pencil point sharpened. 

I had to layer a medium grey over each spot - yes, each and every one, talk of tedium! - to give the red the greater depth required. 

Then I used orange and a light brown to give some shading to each petal, with the lighter parts in orange and the deeper bits, in brown.

This was an exercise in observation - how the red in the spots was picked up at the tips and bases of each petal. 

The centre part of the flower was very hurriedly done. For this, I Googled for a picture of this type of orchid and drew it from a reference picture. It's not very good - but I suppose it looks real enough and recognisable as one variety of orchid found in Singapore.

Another dragon!

From an Oriental, fire-breathing dragon (see last post here) to this cartoony cutie, complete with wings, which his Oriental cousin doesn't have.

I drew and colored this in 40 minutes for a birthday card. Having taken classes in cartooning some years ago, I'm familiar with the conventions of cartooning. I adapted this from a drawing I saw on the Internet, but the colors are all my own. I wanted them bright and cheery for Sammy, whose birthday will be celebrated this Sunday.

I should have put in more effort for the words above. It was nearing 3am and I admit I was looking to finish the job!