The foo dog

This was a doublespread, so I took two pictures of it - better than one small one. The foo dog is often an architectural feature decorating the top of the posts at the main gates of (overwrought) Chinese homes. They are called "dogs" but are actually lions, and are often cast in bronze or stone.

This one here, drawn by Philippine illustrator Kerby Rosanes in his book Mythomorphia, is a male one, distinguished by a ball underfoot. If it were female, it would be a cub with her.

I chose this color for the body because this is a bronze one. A burnisher pencil was used to convey the smoothness of the surface.

The curly-cues around the head, tail and face of the lion: I couldn't really figure them out - whether they were clouds or part of the lion. I went with a bronze-y, pale yellow color for them, intending to make these part of the lion, as if it were evaporating, or morphing into cloud.

 With the palette so neutral thus far, I made the lanterns in red and blue pops of color on the page.

The steampunk cat

I'm happy with the way this turned out... a ginger cat (my love for red hair/fur, again!)  with "bionic eye", wearing a jaunty top hat in teal, accessorised with a brooch, a pocket chain watch, feather, skull and assorted small mechanised gadgets.

This one is still collecting a lot of "likes" on my Instagram and Pinterest feeds, where, for some reason, many iterations of this Rosanes drawing also feature ginger cats with blue-green top hats. 

I'm getting a lot of practice with coloring metal with this Fantomorphia book, another of Philippine illustrator Kerby Rosanes' works.

I was stumped for a while for the color to use in those mysterious pieces of tubing sticking out of the cat, so went with a purplish-grey, neutral enough not to attract too much attention. 

The steampunk peacock

The aim was to achieve the splendid blue-green iridescence typical of peacocks, but I don't think I quite got it here.

This drawing was from Kerby Rosanes' book Fantomorphia book, which a friend and I agree seems to have been churned out in a hurry to cash in on his successes with his earlier books, Animorphia, Imagimorphia and Mythomorphia. The drawings in this book - rather thinner than the other three - all have a steampunk theme, that is, with lots of metallic machine parts worked into animals and objects.

Hence this peacock. Part bird, part kavadi! Yes, it does look really like those heavy metallic, spiked structures carried by Hindu devotees at Thaipusam to show their penance for sins past, doesn't it?

I made the spikes piercing the bird gold and kept the rest of the palette for the "kavadi" in browns and maroons. The sharp definition between the yellow and brown of each gold spike is meant to convey high shine, rather than a matt finish.

The pair of goblins

I put the bulk of my effort into their tunics, with darker tones in the shadows and lighter ones where they catch the light.  The one with the green tunic, I gave him my favourite red hair, just for contrast. Overall, I spent  more time on him than on his brother with the red tunic.

You can tell from the way the strokes of the pencil aren't as smoothed out with a burnisher on Mr Red like Mr Green. Mr Green, especially, has received a lot of "likes" on Instagram and Pinterest for my choice of color.

Their respective collections of swords behind them were an exercise in coloring metal, as were their gold cuffs. They turned out all right, I think?

Both have bad skin with angry breakouts, and yellowed teeth. I don't imagine goblins pay much heed to skin or dental care.

A commercial break here (unpaid, mind you): I bought this book Colored Pencil Painting Bible by Alyona Nickelsen as a guide to achieving the right textures.

And once again, the curse of the big background expanse struck. I didn't want to color it in.

 

The faun

I wasn't too excited about this drawing from the outset, so did it fairly quickly. This fellow isn't human, so I reckoned a grey skin with purplish markings (like he's got Karposi's Sarcoma!) would be okay for him.

I let his horns and hooves catch the light to show texture, but didn't want them so shiny like metal.

The leaves and the small critters were a pain to do.

Overall, an underwhelming effort. 

Hullo again, it's been a long spell!

It's been a year and a day since my last post, oh my. There's a reason for it. A lot has happened. We moved house, for one, and with that, Life intrudes into time that one would like to set aside for a hobby and just about boots it out.

I have, however, done some coloring in the past year, not as much as before, but some, so I'll now play catchup and do little write-ups for them... what little I can recall of the thoughts that I had as I did these. 

We'll start off with the merman, which I did soon after the mermaid.  Here's the dude, who appears on the page facing the mermaid in Kerby Rosanes' Mythomorphia book: 

I gave him red hair, which I find attractive.

The school of purple fish: I kept them all in one color, because, I suspect, I wasn't too excited about this picture and couldn't be bothered to think of a color palette that might work.

And, once again, I didn't color in the background after filling in the light blue for the bubbles behind the merman... This is becoming my weakness. I often feel I've done enough with a piece and don't want to finish filling in the background.

Just about the only thing I like about this one (the red hair aside) is the rich orange tail...