Miaow, Meow, Mew

(acrylic on paper, A4)

Do black cats consider themselves unlucky?

Mantis style

-My style is the best, and so I challenge you! 

-Aha! But my style is better!

- Generic kung-fu flick dialogue

Just testing out some new colour pencils I have. Insects are cool.

Vintage

Another drawing in charcoal.

This time I tried to get the proportions right so that she didn't look like she jumped out of a cartoon. Drawing a different pose also helped. I wanted to draw her whole body, but the paper was too small and I don't think I can capture fine details with charcoal just yet.

Charcoal is so damn messy, but so much fun to play with. OK, time to wipe the dust off my table :)

Illustration Friday: expired, Part 2

Here's a little something to balance out the diabetes-inducing sweetness of my last IF submission:

(soft pastel on black paper)

Your time's up.

Illustration Friday: expired

My entry for Illustration Friday. This week's topic, "expired":

I think one of the eggs might be a bit off...

New medium

2 posts in 1 day? Well, yeah :)

I've always wanted to try drawing with charcoal (drawing on concrete floors and walls excluded). My interest was renewed after watching the title sequence of The Pacific. Now what I've drawn is hardly in the same league as the aforementioned title sequence, but I think still decent for a first try. I also found it much easier to use than soft pastel, probably because it's even softer and monochrome.

I referenced a random picture I found on the internet, so I don't know who the girl is. I was just drawn to her hairstyle and dark hair which translated really well in charcoal. She also looks a bit cartoonish and child-like because I drew her eyes bigger than normal. Yes, I messed up her facial proportions ever so slightly, but we'll call that artistic license :)

Think fast, sketch faster, part 2

More sketch practice. This time I brought my camera with me so I took photos, which meant that I could refer back to them and sketch people on the move. Again, no real detail, just shapes and lines.

Girl with a dog. It's supposed to be a boxer but it looks like a mutt :)

Boy feeding a swan

Think fast, sketch faster

I want to draw people. The problem is that I'm bad at drawing people, especially with proportions and foreshortening. So I took a walk through my local park and made myself sketch human form. Sitting on a bench I sketched people that sat on the bench opposite me.

The thing with drawing people on the move is that they are on the move. Fortunately sitting people don't move around as much but I still had to draw quickly. Drawing quickly also meant that I had to capture body lines instead of fine detail, and be more confident with the lines I draw (I didn't bring an eraser with me). I still have a long way to go but doing this was kind of fun, even if the weather was a bit breezy.

I was also going to take some photos around the park for my own reference, but it's difficult to do that when you forget to bring your camera XD

Illustration Friday: subterranean

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday, "subterranean".

 (ink pens on black paper, A4)

I didn't want to think too hard about what to do for this week's topic, nor did I want to spend a lot of time on it. "Subterranean" didn't really inspire me in any way other than underground. So I basically sketched out a really simple cave drawing and scribbled in the colour with some ink pens. The man with the pastel lantern was an afterthought and fits pretty well with the piece, as well as my blog title which I changed from "I don't draw...". Yes, it was my attempt at sarcasm and humour. But you know, some days...

Tears of a clown... fish

I wanted to get some more watercolour practice in before I do the next Illustration Friday (that's if I even do it) because as frustrating as watercolour can be, I enjoy it. My past uses of watercolour have been dark to say the least, so much so that the grey and black pans in my tray are getting some serious abuse while the other colours are unused and neglected. Looking for inspiration I turned to my desktop wallpaper, which currently houses some clownfish.

(re-scanned for your viewing pleasure)

I have a habit of wanting to fill in with solid block colours (probably picked up from acrylic painting) so what I wanted to do this time was keep the colours fairly thin, I didn't want to 'Nemo' him. Yes, I failed that. I also outlined in black which, I learned in high school is a serious no-no when you're trying to draw or paint realistically as the real world is not outlined. Well, good thing this isn't in the real world.

Edit: I outlined the outline in white. Now my fish glows.

Illustration Friday: brave

(watercolour and ink, A4)

Fall or fight?

As with most of the IF's that I've done so far, this wasn't my first idea. If I have a flash of inspiration, I'll come up with one idea, then another and another and I'll overload and decide that most are overly ambitious and scrap them. It's quite sad when I have an idea in my head and it looks amazing, but then I can't actually put it down onto paper, or when I do it looks nothing like what I wanted.

I've been in a pretty dark place emotionally for months now and I don't really see an end to it yet. Like my ideas, one thing happens, then another and another. So this was inspired in part by that place in my head. It also reminds me of the scenes in Dragon where Bruce Lee is battling that huge demon. I don't know why this is apparent to me now, I haven't watched that film in ages.

Illustration Friday: perspective

I decided to keep this week's Illustration Friday really simple (click for big):

 

All he wants is to be included.