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!

A dragon

This was off another page from Your Personal Wish Book by Asian geomancer Lillian Too, with illustrations by Jennifer Too.

Lillian's "commandment" on the page facing this drawing was to color the dragon, a Chinese symbol of strength and vitality, "in a color that resonates with you", and to render its "magical" scales with a glitter pen.

My tin of Derwent pencils, a set of 72, were out, so I used those instead of Prismacolors.

I went with purple, my favourite color, for the dragon, and layered it with green nearer the areas where the scales catch the light. Instead of glitter, I used my white gel pen to bring out the high whites in the bright areas.

For the head, I opted for strong reds, oranges and yellows. I picked a strong pea green for the spines through the creature's length.

As for the pearl: That caused some difficulty, and I'm not pleased with the result. I looked up some tutorials online, and they seemed to advise using contrasting shades of white and deep grey, and to layer the white in pink and mint green to bring out the luminescence. As you can see, it didn't quite work. I think the white I used wasn't white enough.

A rethink on the clouds: I should have done them in white, with some bluish shading, instead of using two pale shades of blue.

As for the rim of Chinoiserie patterns around the dragon, I did it quickly. The fine lines were quite a pain and a test of my patience. I only reminded myself to keep the colors muted so that the dragon, the main event, would pop.

The option for the rim pattern would have been to keep it monotone, probably in blue, in a nod to Ming blue-and-white pottery.

I put this on Instagram, and R says she thought it was a photograph of a porcelain plate. I guess this piece turned out ok overall.

But the pearl, the pearl, aaarrrggghhh!

Fish!

Nine fish from Your Personal Wish Book by Lilian and Jennifer Too.  

After some freehand-drawn works, I returned to my coloring books this last weekend, this time picking up a lesser-used book, Your Personal Wish Book by the Asian geomancer Lillian Too. The illustrations are by Jennifer Too, probably a relative.

The challenge tossed by the two Toos (haha) was to render the nine fish (carp?) on the page in vibrant reds. The Chinese say that the word for fish, yu, sounds like the word for excess, yu. The number nine is no accident either. It is a symbol of longevity. 

I used my box of 72 Derwents for this one. It had several shades of reds, from the deep cranberry to pale orange. I picked a combo of three to four colors for each fish - a red, a paler red and a neutral (grey or sand) - in hopes the combo would work. 

It was after I was done that I realised that I should have played with shades within each fish, as each body would be thrown in shadow in parts and gleaming bright white in others. So it was a belated effort, an afterthought,  to render some parts of the fish with an overlay of mid-grey. 

It was a conscious effort to keep the flowers and floating lotus leaves in pale pastels so the fish would pop. 

This piece was done under less-than-perfect lighting, so does not bear up well to a closer inspection. Some parts of the scales were imperfectly colored. (*Embarassment*) For this, I blame the lighting in our living room on Saturday night. My presbyopia didn't help any! 

Towards the end, after the nine fish were done and I was onto the flowers, I was losing patience, and did the rest of it quickly, so it's not one of my best efforts.

Carnations

 

After seeing my drawing of Marutaro (see preceding post), a long-time friend asked if I could draw some carnations for her - specifically, red ones. She didn't say so, but I knew they are her favourite flower; she had held a bunch of them in her bridal bouquet. (She's now a mum three times over, and the children are in their 20s.)

I turned to good ol' Dr Google for photos of carnations and picked a reference picture to work from. They are a solid red - not the red-and-white striped variety, thank goodness - but demanded no-less close observation on the various shades of red and how to render it like the petals were all folded against themselves within the blooms.

This was first sketched lightly in 2B pencil. The detail work itself was done using my Prismacolor pencils, using at least two shades of red, a true red and Scarlet Lake, a deeper maroon. Coloring them in took two hours or so, rather less time than I expected.

After the petals, the stems and leaves were a breeze. They were done in Sage Green mainly, with touches of a darker green, yellow, a 50% warm grey and some white.

I had to keep reminding mys0elf to keep the pencils at a sharp point, especially to render the serated petal edges.

I presented them to her this afternoon and she was truly appreciative, said that it was great that I had fun doing it and that it was something that felt to her like a blessing as well.

Post-script: My friend has framed the picture, and it now sits atop her dresser. Wow, my work, good enough for framing! (Jan 8, 2017)

Marutaro, Instagram's famous dog

 

The family are fans of Marutaro, the loveable shiba inu who has two and a half million followers of his feed on Instagram. This perpetually-smiling pooch lives in Tokyo with his owner Shinjiro Ono and is also the star of a Tokyo suburb "museum" of all things Maru; it's where you can buy all manner of souvenirs, from tee-shirts to posters and fridge magnets.

A challenge was tossed to me: Draw Maru from one of his photographs. This work took, I guess, five to six hours, spread over a few sessions ... time stolen from here and there through the week.

I sketched the dog lightly in pencil, and thereafter, it was a huge exercise in really seeing what was before me - thinking in terms of abstract colors - rather than drawing from any preconceived notions of what a dog should look like.

The big challenge was that I was drawing on white Canson paper, and Maru, a tan-colored dog, does have a lot of white in his fur. Pinterest was a big help. I learned from posts on color pencil art that even white-furred dogs/cats do have a lot of "color" in their fur, sometimes reflected off their surroundings. With Maru's white parts, I used Prismacolor's range of warm greys and French greys, and also some sage green, a greyish-green, believe it or not.

Even the brown parts took more than a few shades of brown to achieve depth and a fluffy look. The finished work is an improvement on my drawing of Tasha (see post here), but is still not quite there, not as realistic as some of the photo-realistic drawings of animals one sees on Pinterest. But it'll do for now; I still consider myself a beginner!

Another tool I used for this drawing was a white gel pen, a Mitsubishi Signo Uniball, which was indispensable in rendering the bright white parts - the bits of his black lip and tongue, which are wet with saliva and reflect as bright white, and his fine white whiskers. Being able to dot his pupils with the white also made the eyes come more alive!

More color pencils!

The husband bought me another two boxes of pencils while on a recent visit to Sydney.

Both are by Derwent. One is from this brand's "Artists' Pencils" range, a tin of 24 colors. Check its details out here. The Derwent site says their waxy texture makes them ideal for layering and blending. I have started using them for a drawing in my Enchanted Forest book and the pencils are as promised - highly blendable, so the gradations of color are beautifully smooth.  

Doesn't even look like color pencils, huh?
Work still unfinished. 

I'd even say that this set is more blendable than the Derwent tin of 72 Coloursoft pencils that I got from my sister last Christmas. Check out the details of that box of 72 here.   

The other new tin I have will take me to uncharted territory - water-soluble pencils! This second tin comes under the Derwent Academy series, a tin of 24 colours. Details of it here.  I have yet to use it as I have been busy, but I've had fun preparing to use them, haha.

I visited Straits Commercial Art shop a few weeks ago to buy paint brushes and a water pen, the kind with a reservoir and a brush tip. I plan to do a pencil drawing and then go over the colors with water and these brushes for water-color wash effects.

If only I had more spare time.

Li'l ol' me... four boxes of color pencils, all artist-grade!! One could be so lucky.