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.

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: 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...

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.

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

Illustration Friday: burning

#She's on fire:

(soft pastel on paper, A3)

I haven't drawn anything in a while because I've been uninspired (and lazy), so here's a quick-ish pastel drawing for this week's IF. Photographed as usual, can't scan an A3 pastel without some serious post-cleanup.

I'm also fairly pleased that despite my lack of skill at drawing facial features combined with the relative speed at which I did this, the figure actually looks female and not like a man in drag.

...and she burns through the night at the speed of light#

Illustration Friday: beneath

What lies beneath the surface?

(soft pastel on paper, A3)

Sometimes you don't see a person's true colours until you least expect it. I know this from recent experience. To switch into two-faced manipulative mode at my weakest moment was really low.

And so to you, who ended up being an annoying thorn in my side, whose words and actions made me wish I never knew you, this is dedicated to you.

(I didn't mean for this 'rant' to come across like some kind of justification for my picture - I usually prefer the picture to speak for itself - but, like I've said before, inspiration can sometimes come from the weirdest of places)

Illustration Friday: star gazing

2nd post today, I'm on a roll. (edit: now with slightly less crummy photography!)

Hey the stars are out tonight:

(pastel and pen on black paper, A3)

You look up at the stars, I look back at you...

I couldn't scan this in my A4 scanner without it looking like a bad cut-and-paste job, so a photo has to do (scanning pastel is messy too)

Enjoy :)

Illustration Friday: caged

My entry for this week's Illustration Friday, no cages allowed:

(soft pastel and pen, A4)

Big fish eat little fish. Little fish all like O.O


My creative block is back again. I want to paint something but I dunno what.

Illustration Friday: ahead

My entry for Illustration Friday, this week's topic, "ahead":

(soft pastel on black paper, A4)

So what lies ahead?

Freehand drawn with a couple of shadow/tunnel pictures for reference, then I fixed the colour levels a little in Photoshop (the original is slightly faded because of the wonders of fixative). Feels good to do another dark and moody piece...

On a side note, my previous two pastel drawings came out crappy to not-so-crappy. I now know that this is partly because of a piece of white blackboard chalk that somehow made its way into my pastel set, and I couldn't tell the difference between it and the pastels as I rarely use pastels. The piece of chalk now sits in my bin.

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.

For you

It's been a while since my last entry. I got sidetracked with other stuff like trying to finish a book and some computer related nonsense. I'm going to get back to painting again - I have at least 3 paintings I want to do - but before that I tried to dabble in some soft pastel goodness.

Done on black paper. Not my best use of pastel TBH, but I have only ever used them properly maybe 3 times, this one included. I learned a whole load of stuff doing this:

• Don't do a detailed piece in A4. It's too small and detail will be non-existant
• Don't use black paper if you want the picture to be vibrant
• Use paper with more tooth, the pastel will stick to the paper better
• Fixative is good at removing contrast
• Photoshop is good at getting it back :D

Again, it's all learning from past experiences, good and bad. And drawing this brought back a few good memories.

On to the next one...

Update (2011-03-08): I really want to draw this again. It was only after a few more pastel pictures that I realised a piece of blackboard chalk had somehow made it's way into my box of pastels. The chalk was too hard and didn't blend or stick to the paper properly. I now have proper white pastels, some nice A3-sized pastel paper and more practice with soft mediums, so most of the problems I initially had should be gone with a redo.