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 :)

Flyin' rats

A couple of pigeons. The first was done in watercolour:

 I spent an hour, maybe 2 (on and off) total on this one.

The second pigeon was a really quick pen sketch and coloured with grey pencil as I don't seem to have a grey pen handy... Oh wait, just as I finished typing that I realised I have a grey Alpha marker but that's alcohol-based and I used water-based ink and hey look, I'm going off on a tangent:

I spent maybe 5 minutes on this one. I didn't outline in pencil beforehand and I'm pointing this out because it's something I rarely do. It's scruffy as hell and I didn't finish colouring in the green-purple feathers because I didn't want to over colour it, even if I undercoloured it. But for some reason I prefer this scruffy, unfinished pidge over the planned out and full colour pidge.

Funny how that happens...

Braid

Just a quick 'n' dirty sketch. Haven't used plain pencil in a while, I'm rusty.

Back to painting, I think...

New Year

Woops, I haven't posted in a while. Happy New Year and all that jazz... Anyway to get back into the flow I'm posting a painting that's nearing completion:

I started at the end of last year, then came the holidays and the Christmas period which naturally meant it was put on the back burner. But it's nearly finished. It still needs some touch up work, some flowers don't look like flowers and the table is a little flat, otherwise it's pretty much done.

I have another canvas which is begging to be painted on... I just need to decide what I'm going to put on it. I wanted to do something graffiti-based, but it's not easy to emulate the style with paintbrushes. I could use spray paint but I decided that I'm not going to splash out extra on a bunch of cans when I have a ton of oils and acrylics, plus my can control isn't that good. Ahh, decisions.

I'm thinking about changing this blog's colour scheme. Dark greys and blacks are easy on the eyes and blue is one of my favourite colours, but it's not exactly a "happy" overall look.

I also plan to post more sketches and other ideas, rather than just posting final pieces. I need to get back into a sketching/doodling frame of mind, regardless of how crappy I think they'll turn out. If the Mayans and other wacky prophets are correct this will be my last year to ever post here, so I might as well take advantage of the time we have left :P


Roll on, 2012.