Earth Hour

I didn't even know it was Earth Hour tomorrow (or in about 30 minutes from now), I only found out because there was a light switch widget on YouTube.

(soft pastel on black paper, A4)

I've now learnt that Earth Hour is held on the last Saturday of March, and what better way to celebrate the event than to draw a lightbulb?* It's not the first time a light bulb has featured in my drawings. I drew an old-school round filament bulb for an old IF topic. This time I went the other way and drew one of those "controversial" energy-saving twisty bulbs. Quite fitting for the theme, methinks. It kind of looks airbrushed/spraypainted too, which is a nice effect.


*Well, I guess also turning off lights and other electrical appliances that you're not using.

Which way?

Just a quick doodle, inspired by a thought/dream I had the previous night.

I haven't drawn much, I've been a bit more experimental with photography recently. That doesn't mean I'm snapping pics with my phone and then passing them through a crummy filter (because you know, apparently everyone's a "photographer" when they have a camera and an out-of-focus subject). But I'm not a photographer either, I just like pictures.

Also, having a bunch of photos means (or should mean) more source material to draw inspiration from.

I think I've said that before.

Squawk Squawk

Here's a macaw.

(felt pen on paper, A4)

I had a macaw as my desktop wallpaper and it was really colourful, hence my reason for drawing it. It's 100% pen, no pencil sketches or outlines, which in a way accounts for the rather rough nature of the drawing (which I like). Once I was done, the bird and its bright colours reminded me of a tattoo... a tattoo that I would advise nobody to get, but a tattoo nonetheless*.

My scanner was also set at 600dpi and the initial full-sized scan was over 7000 pixels wide (!) so when I zoomed in to the wing the preview had this really abstract look:

Sometimes, drawing and looking at things the way they aren't is fun too.

My desktop isn't a macaw anymore. Today its a blurry leaf macro photo. In a few days it'll be something else. Ahhh, the customisation never ends...

*Apologies to all the people looking for a macaw tat and stumbling on this page instead. Google's keywords makes the rules, not me :)

Illustrated envelope fun time

So, when the theme is a glamorous Pre-Oscars party, and you have a birthday card with an unbelieveably boring envelope and a box of felt tip pens, you obviously customise the envelope. Obviously!

(felt pen on... an envelope!)

From cruddy ball-point sketch, to pencil outline, to fill in.

I should have stopped there, but the back was as dull as the front was before I got my grubby mitts on it, so I did a little Googlin' and found some images of the official Oscar envelope design, for a little inspiration.

The back of the official envelope...

...and my humble little homage/rip :D

Any excuse to customise something :)

Illustration Friday: ferocious

RAWR!:

 (watercolour, A5)

I really wanted to follow the topic and draw something mean, dark, ferocious even, but for some reason I just couldn't think of anything. I must be having a creative block in terms of dark subject matter. Hmm, worrying...

At least her hair looks fierce.

It felt good to do another watercolour, I've been trying my hand at oil paints and it's been hit and miss (mostly miss). I think I miss the speed at which I need to paint with water-based media. Oil paint is great for blending and reworking but you need patience. Oh, and cleaning up afterwards is tedious.

(BTW I suck at creating characters)

As you can see I was going to try and draw a cartoony cat. That didn't pan out, but cute kid in a cat costume did. The ball of yarn was an afterthought, as the kid looked odd bearing her claws at nothing.

As usual my initial sketches are weird-looking. While others go into great detail and produce reams and reams of ideas, revisions, revisions of ideas, I usually doodle a few things in pen on a tiny scrap of paper (those are A6 sheets up there!) then transfer it onto the final paper. Thankfully my paper is very forgiving as this is when I end up working and reworking the pencil lines. I know I should do proper sketches beforehand but hey, it's not easy to change, especially when it works for me.

While I wait for a painting to dry...

...I broke out some white Conté crayons and decided to do a quick portrait. Unlike most of the portraits that I (attempt to) do in black on white paper, this one was reversed. Slightly different process, I think.

(White Conté crayon on black paper, A3)

This time I tried to keep it sketchy instead of smoothing it out too much, otherwise it starts to look too unnatural. That said, I've noticed that when I try a portrait, I usually end up drawing the eyes much bigger than they are supposed to be, thereby making it unnatural anyway. Hah. I guess that's my thing then. I must really like eyes.

Illustration Friday: remedy

I got the poison, I got the remedy:

(watercolour, watercolour pens, ink, A4)

Take 2 happy pills and call me in the morning.


I just realised this is the second watercolour I've done in this kind of style, the first one was for a previous Illustration Friday topic. It's definitely not the first time I've used broken white lines. I like it. I think I might adopt it as my go-to style. Wait, have I finally found my style?

I doubt it...

Illustration Friday: soaked

Seeing how the end of the world hasn't panned out today, I might as well post my entry. No colour this time:

(charcoal, A3)

Third portrait in a row. Still not brilliant at doing them, but they are fun to do.

Maybe the hellfire will come later...

Shhh!

(charcoal, A3-ish)

It's oh so quiet.

Earrings

(charcoal, A3)

Keeping it sketchy.

Illustration Friday: bottled

Yeah, you know the deal:

(pen and pastel on paper, A4)

I added a vignette to darken it somewhat, the original image scanned way too bright. It also makes the image look old, which is a pretty neat effect.

original

detail

Dots, everywhere dots.


Update: I also found the first doodle I made when this week's topic was announced:

This is usually how I put my idea down before I completely forget it: really badly on a scrap of paper and in ball-point pen :)

Cat in a hat

Another quick portrait, 20ish minutes, #3 (I think) #4

(charcoal on paper, A3)

I should draw more light-haired people.

IF next, that's if I can get the idea from my imagination onto paper.

Afro

Quick portrait again, in a similar vein to my others (take a reference picture, grab some charcoal, sketch fast, ignore the details). I did this one because the afro is spiffy:

(charcoal on paper, A3)

The proportions are off (the face should be bigger and turned much more to the side) but that wasn't really my concern. I just wanted to draw fast. If I tried to draw it picture perfect then there's really no point in drawing it (/self disclaimer). Again, about 20 minutes on this, maybe 25 with colouring the afro.

The reference I used was of Marsha Hunt. She used to rock a cool afro in the '60s and '70s. Pretty too.

And finally a closeup photo, the full shot doesn't really pick out the different shades of black and grey too well.

 

I might get an A2 pad, A3 feels a little small to do these kind of drawings...

Oh hey, a doodle...

Wow, I actually found one that doesn't look horrible!

 

Having said that, it doesn't look too much like a doodle either.

And in case you are wondering (you aren't) where you've seen these two before this is Bait meeting Proverb.

Illustration Friday: warning

Be alert!:

(soft pastel on paper, A3)

Here's the thought process I went through to arrive at this idea for this week's theme:

WARNING, okay...

danger,

dangerous,

dangerous animal,

poisonous animal,

toads? frogs?

poison dart frog!

ugh, I don't really want to draw animals again...

puffer fish?

snakes?

king cobra!

dude, those are still animals...

ok fine, warning and people...

warning colours,

displays,

masks?

war mask,

sounds interesting...

war paint...

tribal paint?

tribal costumes?

now that's more like it.

I've been on a bit of a pastel/charcoal trip as of late, so it wasn't really any surprise that I would choose pastels again. I used a couple of reference pics for the body shape and for some ideas for the headdress but other than that this was completely made up.

menacing...

More adventures in charcoal (20 mins, #2)

Another portrait!
Like my last portrait I spent about 20 minutes drawing it, focusing again on the shape and form of the face and hair rather than detail. The charcoal helps enormously with that. It's a pretty good exercise in restraint:

 

(charcoal on paper, A3)

Thanks to the unknown girl who put her picture on the net and ended up on my computer as a reference. I probably should look for some male faces to draw just to mix things up a little, but girls are just nicer to look at.

An A3 scanner would be great for these. Taking photos of a bigger than A4 piece just isn't the same, even after adjusting the tone and colour levels.

(I promise to try my best to not make certain people look fat in their pictures when they aren't at all...)

20 mins

Just a quick portrait done in charcoal.

(charcoal on paper, A3)

This was pretty easy to do. I only spent about 20 minutes on it because I wasn't trying to make it overly detailed. I might make this type of drawing a regular thing (yeah, I've never said that before...). Besides, I need a LOT of practice drawing human form.

Illustration Friday: swarm

*clap clap*:

(paint pens and soft pastel on black paper, A4)

I didn't want to go with the obvious choice of bees, so I went with the less obvious (or really weird) choice of moths... and other winged creatures.

I am not a vandal (Happy birthday, Morgan)

I made this as a birthday present, not because I was raging against the system:

(spray paint on... a wall, derp)

The closest I'd ever gotten to writin' my name in graffiti on the wall was when I was a teen and did a few simple tags here and there, but that really isn't in the spirit of graffiti, or writing (if you're a graffiti snob). Plus that spirit involves hitting spots at crazy hours of the morning, hiding from the law and racking your paint, none of which I really fancied doing. I'm still a huge fan of graffiti and it's place in hip-hop culture, so for the most part my graff has been kept on paper, until yesterday.

My cousin and his partner pretty much asked me to draw a little something on their daughter's wall for her birthday, with the words "lil' star" incorporated into it. I normally do the usual greeting card but with an unusual design on the envelope (a la keeping it on paper). My cousin suggested that this would be an extension of that tradition but on a bigger - and vertical - surface. I'm pretty sure he wasn't thinking the whole wall but I already was.

from the paper to the wall

I ended up having to stack the words on top of each other as it would have been too long to fit on one line. The funny thing is that they will be rehoused in a few months as the council are supposed to be demolishing their building to make way for a new development, which means that this will also fall into a big pile of rubble. Kind of sad to do something like this only for it to disappear down the road. But I guess that's one of the things about graffiti, that it's never supposed to be permanent, even if this was legal and not going to be buffed out by anti-vandalism cleaners :)

I like that the time-and-tested combo of chrome and black really stands out. I did have a few problems with it though:

• I have NEVER drawn anything as big as this before, in any medium... ever, so I got a bit excited with the size of it. It's a little too big.
• The paint kept dripping. This was most likely due to the wallpaper not wanting to take the paint properly. Wallpaper isn't a very good surface to spray on unless it's matt and super absorbant, which this wasn't.
• My white spray can kept sticking and clogging. How annoying is a can that splatters instead of sprays? It also made adding the highlights harder, and made my fingers hurt from pressing down so hard.
• I got tired at the end and my fingers were starting to cramp, so the final simple details kind of went a bit wonky.

Fortunately the pictures hide most of the drips and smudges. It probably is best admired from afar. Maybe if I had more than a couple of hours, a better surface and much more practice it would have been cleaner and crisper. But for a first attempt at anything more than a tag in about 15 years I'm pleased with how it turned out.

clash

Yeah, I've been slacking on updates. Let's just say that I've been pretty uninspired as of late.

I did however finish my post for "Ariele* & Kinga's Awesome and Amazing Illustration Project". It doesn't really have a title as outrageous as that, after all we're only on the second word. My word of choice as well.

And here is that second word. I present to you "clash":

(soft pastel on paper, A3)

This started out as a random photo that I took in the Philippines last Christmas, of 2 fighting cocks squaring up against each other. I used it as a reference to draw a simple pencil sketch which in turn was used as a reference to draw this almost entirely freehand in soft pastel. I decided on pastel because of how messy and smudged it can get, which was useful in trying to capture the speed and chaos in which the birds moved.

Cockfighting, or sabong is a very popular pastime in the Philippines and probably pre-dates the Spaniard's colonisation of the islands. More about the history and traditions here.

I remember the first real cockfighting event I'd ever been to, about 5 or 6 years ago. I'd never seen anything like it. Organised chaos describes it best. Shouting and betting on the favourite (meron) and the underdog (wala). The absolute silence in the pit as the birds are dropped to their feet. The anticipation of the first slash. It was horrific and exciting at the same time.

In the drawing above neither of the birds had a cockspur as it wasn't a real cockfight, merely a conditioning test by the birds' sabungero. Both birds had a glove over their natural spur to prevent any unnecessary damage.

And now the customary WIP pics :)

Update: Complimentary link-back to Kinga's illustration here. Check it out!

*This is indeed my real name. Hello world