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.

Good hair day

I know I'm not good at portraits. I also know that I'm not too good with oil paints. So why I combined the two, I don't know.

I used painting knives instead of paintbrushes because I wanted to experiment with creating texture this time around. I spent a lot time on her hair, where all the texture was. I started to paint her face and upper body with a knife as well but it wasn't translating well. By the time I decided to use paintbrushes, the paint already began to solidify and so the textures have stuck. I'm not too fussed, we'll call it 'character'. Anyway, I'm not going to pretend that this was going to turn out like a portrait from an Old Master. It was just me moving a load of thick paint on the paper.

Bumpy...

Illustration Friday: swell

 Water, water, everywhere:

 (oil paint, A3-ish)

I thought I'd break out the oil paints and try to paint water. This photo came out a little bit too bright though. The paint was still wet when I snapped it (I stopped painting about 10 minutes ago) and the wet paint reflected some light in a few odd places. I still need to fix some parts, like the background water and especially the breaking wave which, for some strange reason keeps coming out square every time I paint it, but I thought I might as well post now. After all there are only a couple more days until this week's topic is done.

I'm also determined to actually finish this rather than call it a WIP and then forget about it like I did with my first few oil paint attempts. Hooray for me.


(Only after I chose my "water water" intro line did I decide to look it up and find out that it is actually a line from a poem called "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner". I didn't even know the poem existed until now. Hmm, you really do learn something new every day. Thanks for that, Google.)

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Update, 17th August:
Photos don't seem to do the painting justice. Either the colours are wrong, light is reflecting off it and creating different effects, or there isn't enough light (damn you, English summers!) My first photo (up there) included a few details that aren't actually in the painting but enhanced the image somewhat. So I painted in some of those artifacts and, thanks to a great tip in the comments section I repainted the breaking wave to look less square. I changed the background water as it was too busy and repetitive and the shade of blue right in the distance seemed artificial. This is how my painting looks a day later. I retouched it slightly in Photoshop to get the colour levels as close as I could to the original painting.

It's getting there.
I plan to repaint the sky next. The blue doesn't feel right.

Destroy

(Update, 6th August, 2011: Also submitted to Illustration Friday for the topic 'imperfect')

Kinga's and my personal illustration project is a little overdue, but I'm done. This time it's my topic of choice. I decided to break the pattern of monosyllabic words thus far and chose 'destroy':

(acrylic and pen, A3)

This was a weird one. It started off with a photo of a swan that I'd taken a while back. I thought to myself "it looks too clean...".

I started off in a painterly style, and the water leant itself quite well to it. Part way through I was watching a TV documentary about Impressionist painters, notably Monet and Renoir. I was inspired by it and made the water even more brushy-looking than my usual style normally dictates. The swan didn't really lend itself too much to a painterly style however. I wanted the appearance of fine details so I drew them in with white Posca pen. This gave the swan's body the suggestion of feathers, rather than looking like a milky, washed-out blob. It also made the swan pop out from the watery background, which was a nice after-effect.

After the first pass it looked like this:

I could have just finished here and called this something like Swan #1, but seeing as the topic was destroy and this had no kind of destructive quality about it, I had to go on.

The next step was to sketch a rough piece to overlay. I had a few choices for what word to use. I could have just went with destroy but that was way too obvious (and too long). I could have gone the corny route and used something like style or urban, but those feel like buzzwords used by the media when they portray or describe graffiti. Instead I went the more 'intelligent' route (sure...) and went with mute.

Why 'mute'? Because the swan I painted is commonly known as a mute swan. Makes sense now, doesn't it? I used the typical "dub" style of chrome in black. It's simplicity is in contrast to the complexity and roughness of the painting. Opposites are good.

Silver pen. Shiny.

Nothing like the juxtaposition of a majestic swan with a line of graffiti on it's side.

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...

Last Donut of the Night

I was supposed to start painting my idea for Kinga Bee's and my illustration project, but I got side-tracked by this round piece of cardboard.

 EXIF says September 2010

Primed and ready to paint after 9 months...

If I remember correctly this was a random piece of packaging from the box of an electric kettle. When I first saw it the customising cogwheels in my head kicked in and I thought donut. So I primed it with gesso, with the intention of painting it to look like a donut. When it had dried I put it in a box and forgot about it. Then last week when I decided to start another painting for some reason the cardboard donut sprang to mind.

Two sides to a donut

The design was partly inspired by Stones Throw's Donut Shop, a 2 disc vinyl LP of J-Dilla tracks that has slipmats designed to look like donuts. I decided to paint a donut on each side so, if you feel like a strawberry glazed donut you can pretend to eat the glazed side. Or if you're in the mood for some sprinkles, the sprinkles side.

Donuts for the eyes and ears.


Doughnuts, donuts. Whichever you prefer. They are both tasty.