Aquarius

Maybe I should have waited until next January to post this:

(oil pastel on card)

When I was first introduced to oil pastels in high school I hated them with a passion. I remember drawing a still life one day and every time I tried to add more pastel on top of a previous layer, the previous layer would come off. It was really frustrating. The problem with that still life turned out to be the really crappy card I was given to draw on. Of course practice makes (almost) perfect, and I did end up drawing a huge A1 piece in college, but I still didn't like them. So, seeing as I haven't used oil pastels in over 10 years and my pastel set is around about the same age, this was a bit more of an experiment with those vintage sticks than anything else. I guess they stood the test of time :)

Illustration Friday: fearless

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

A friendly game of cat and mouse...

I'm quite pleased with how this turned out. It's one of the few times where I've used watercolour and the end result actually looks like a watercolour painting. Still, I had to restrain myself from making it overly detailed... old habits die hard :)

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.

Happy birthday Kinga

I wanted to do something nice for Kinga's birthday, because when I last saw her she was stressing out about all manner of things. I'm not the best portrait artist in the world, so what better gift to give than a portrait? :P

For Kinga Bee :)

(graphite on paper, A4)

My first attempt at drawing her was in charcoal and looked like a different person. This one looks more like her so I settled for this one. She said I made her look prettier than in real life... uhm, no that's not possible ;)

I didn't need her permission to post this but I did get her approval. Besides, I'd prefer that she was happy with it and plant a big kiss on my lips than be angry and slap me.

And just so there's no sense of embarrassment, here's a self-portrait that I did in college when I was around 16-17, in acrylic, when I was just starting out in acrylics and even worse at portraits.

Why do I look angry? I dunno, maybe because this was frustrating to paint, especially with cheap student-grade acrylics that were like painting with water. Or it's most likely the angle of the paper distorting my face. The best thing about this self-portrait is the jacket, heh.

Visit Kinga's art blog here.

Illustration Friday: detective

My entry for Illustration Friday (it's been a while), this week's topic, "detective":

(graphite on paper)

He's a detective, or "private eye"... get it?

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first ever person to discover this play on words but hey, an eyeball in a hat and trenchcoat looks spiffy, and much less offensive to draw than a private dick.

===
Update 26/03/2013: My illustration has been used on the cover of an ebook! Check the related blog post for more information.

The missing link

IF has been really uninspiring these past few weeks. I had an idea for "rescue" but I decided not to do it because I had a feeling that I'd seen a very similar picture in a previous IF. Anyway, getting back on topic, because boredom can make me do some weird things here's my quick little tribute to the current internet phenomenon, Standing Cat:

Kalabaw

"Moo"? More like "..."

(acrylic on paper, A3)

This took a bit longer to finish than I'd expected, mostly because I thought I'd messed it up and didn't have the enthusiasm to fix it. But I did fix it, sort of.

And seeing as it's always nice to have some work-in-progress pics, here's a couple of work-in-progress pics. There would have been more but I got carried away with destroying and recovering the painting to take any more :)

 Click here for some more kalabaw-related goodness :)