Coloured Pencil Peony

 I have been trying to take a photograph of a peony for reference for a long time. Still the reference image for this drawing is at least 4 years old. I had intended to try out watercolour pencils. There were unexpected challenges. Even if I let the first layer dry, it would not behave like paint and blend well with another colour. So I went back to using the Berol Fantasy coloured pencils. It turned out OK.

Red Rose of Late Summer or Early Autumn

 The first creative work of art since becoming a person of leisure is a pencil crayon render of this rose from our garden. I used a set of Berol Fantasy pencils. It's not the best quality, but it worked out just the same. It's my third rose. Since the last time, I really wanted to know what still worked. Just pencil illustrations is far too difficult, so I went straight to colour. The main thing now, I have to figure out how to keep the pencils from breaking when I sharpen them.

Colouring and My Drawings

Finally, I have started to use colour medium to render a drawing. The only references I had were photos taken from our garden. At first I used pencil crayons or coloured pencils. These I had an abundant supply of. There were false starts of course, to get used to the practice. I had viewed enough tutorials on Youtube to see what artists had to say about techniques and layering in particular. For the roses, I stopped short of overworking the drawing. The green was used but in the photos, they were ill-defined. In the drawing itself, it almost anchored an otherwise floating flower.

For the second rose, I used a slightly limited palate, but it ended up muddier looking. Clearly I needed to work learn more about colours.

My next challenge was watercolour pencils. I had played around with this before I understood how to release the pigment in this fuller set of pencils. Even then, I still had difficulty matching the colours to the reference photo.

Who's Sorry Now: A Comic Drawing

Drawing in Pen!

I took one correspondence course in commercial art, but most people  know I have only ever sketched in pencil. This started as such. Having read daily comic strips for months now, I became inspired to adapt it for my own style. It took a good many hours in front of the TV, to search for the right scene for re-imagining, and many more hours browsing the internet for what to include in it.

After the initial pencil layout, I was less than impressed by the placement. I let it sit for a month, before deciding on using pen ink to finish it. I had a black gel pen and a set of fine-tip art pens. Setting the drawing on a transparent clipboard, I had a makeshift light table. A couple of design changes later, I continued the hand drawing with coloured pencils.

GIMP: The Write Off

For a while now, I have been trying to make a single panel comic work for Remington Steele. I found inspiration from filing income tax. Drawing caricatures is more difficult than I thought. It's even harder to reproduce the lines with the Ink tool.

GIMP: On Location with Stephanie

It was the perfect image to try painting in GIMP with. It had light and shadows and a good posture. I used for reference The Great Elephant Escape DVD with Stephanie Zimbalist and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Near the end, she leans up against a jeep. I made up the part of her putting on Julian Sands' hat.

As much as I tried to correct the proportions in GIMP, the hat came out a bit off. Still I am satisfied with the results. The Ink Tool is really quite versatile. Now having this as reference, I can go back to the rough sketch and do up a proper pencil drawing.

GIMP: Flowers for Stephanie

I spent the weekend revisiting this drawing with the GIMP Ink Tool. The line art and the colouring is mostly done with this. I used the Airbrush Tool for some of the finer details and background, as well as the Smudge Tool for obvious reasons. It does make the composition look like comic art.

Sketches: Flowers for Stephanie

The idea for this was to do a comical drawing of the cast of Remington Steele. Not since taking that art class in cartooning, have I attempted such an endeavor. It was hard to come up with a style I haven't already seen. So I began studying the character's expressions and simplified the lines.

The sketching was the easy part. Painting presented yet another challenge. I have yet to master the controls in the tablet apps, so it is back to GIMP. Some parts of the drawing, I replaced the line art, some I kept.

Finished!

Started with thumbnails.

One of my favourite poses

The layout had a different drawing