Rooster Booster

Hello all. For this week, I’ve focused on the future, in particular, the turnover of Chinese New Year 2017. The year 2017 will be the year of the rooster. It is yet to happen obviously, but I was inspired by rooster paintings and videos on the internet and I thought I’d do my own. Here’s what I did!

Firstly, I watched a few videos about roosters and chickens. No, I haven’t gone mad (though I’ll be honest, I really enjoyed watching), but I did this as research to help me understand how a rooster moves and holds it’s natural posture. Gaining this insight allowed me to draw a more convincing looking rooster.

Whilst watching the videos I would pause from time to time in order to sketch some interesting positions. Above, you can see the resulting sketches.

Using the sketches, I made my take of two Chinese Brush style paintings, appropriate for the subject of Chinese New Year. The top one has more hot colours in it to symbolise it being the year of the fire rooster. The pose is also unusual: I was attracted to this pose and wanted to paint it because it looked more dynamic.

Lastly, I added some Chinese calligraphy, (please note, I’m not a chinese calligrapher in the least…). Apparently, it means ‘rooster’, I tried to draw it from existing calligraphy I saw on the internet which was written in black ink. I used three colours loaded onto one brush to achieve the gradient effect… again this is to reflect fire.

This one is more traditional in stance. Roosters standing on one leg (particularly on a rock) are more traditional in Chinese Brush painting. I’m slightly dissappointed with the lack in depth of the rock I painted, however, I can forgive myself as the rooster is the main focus here. I am pleased with the spontaneity incorporated into it’s construction though. (Please excuse the rips in the paper on both paintings.)

I have to admit that I don’t have that signiature flowing style associated with Chinese Brush painting, though I did have a lot of fun doing my version of it.

Well, that’s it for now, I do hope you enjoy my work. Please feel free to leave any comments. Thank you for stopping by and I shall see you next time. Bye for now!

Monster Doodle

I did just a quick biro pen doodle for this week… it’s of a monster with a birds nest on it’s head staring at a chick that has fallen out.  I do hope you all enjoy. Cheers for now and have a great week!

Clear As Water (Remembrance)

Hello all. Yesterday, I completed this artwork entitled ‘Clear As Water’ for Remembrance Sunday. Since I only upload posts on Mondays, I thought it best to wait a day and upload it now dispite Remembrance day being yesterday.

This was done using Derivan liquid pencil and ink on paper. For those who do not know what liquid pencil is, it’s a kind of medium that literally looks like liquid graphite. You can paint with it and it dries to a graphite finish. It kind of behaves like watercolour in the way that you can dilute it with water and work with it in washes and layers.

I’ve incorporated a bit of analogy into this piece. I’ve drawn a splash of water along with a poppy made out of water. This is to symbolise how clear we should remember those who have fallen. To strengthen this idea, I’ve written text in ink that reads ‘We will remember them’.

I do hope you enjoy this, and I give my respect to those men and women who have faught for our freedom.

Cheers! See you all next week!

Melted Crayon Fun

Hello all! Today, I present something a little bit more unusual and experimental – artwork done using wax crayons melted into canvas board.

Here, I started by using a heat gun to melt crayons into a liquid. Whilst hot, The liquid runs and pools into interesting shapes.

With this one, I even drew a robotic Koi Carp using paint pens on top.

All of them together.

Melting wax in this way creates beautiful abstract patterns which look great for backgrounds in my opinion. It even creates smooth, bumpy textures in certain areas once the wax has dried which give an extra dimension to the artwork too.

I do hope you’ve enjoyed my post, feel free to leave a comment and drop me a like if you like this. I also hope this has inspired you to try something new too! Cheers for now!

Inktober: 4th and Final Batch

Hello all! This is the last batch of Inktober drawings I have done. Please do enjoy and feel free to comment on my work. Cheers! Oh, and hope you’ve been having a wonderful Halloween!

Day 25: Tired. Knackered

Day 26: Box. Gecko Box

Day 27: Creepy. Creepy Crawly

 

For day 28, I drew two images!

 

Day 28 Burn (1) Firey Dragon

Day 28 Burn (2) Bad Experiment

 

For day 29, I did two versions of the same image. One in wax resist and, for clarity, one as a standard ink drawing (for detailed descriptions of why I did these techniques, please see my G+ page).

 

Day 29: Surprise. Halloween Surprise (wax resist version)

Day 29: Surprise. Halloween Surprise (ink drawing version)

Day 30: Wreck. Pimp My Wreck

Day 31: Friend. Best Hell Buddies

And that’s it for the Inktober Cchallenge! I’m proud to say I drew every word. I did the challenge daily for my G+ and uploaded weekly on this blog. I do hope you’ve enjoyed my work and I shall see you next time. Cheers!