This is a small pencil sketch of some oak leaves and their little acorns. It was done with Fabre-Castell watercolour pencils and a small watercolour brush. I wanted to see how small I could go and still put in some textural detail in the acorn cups. The actual drawing is two and a half inches across.
Here’s a slightly enlarged photo of the drawing…
This week I ‘ve been very busy with the end of term so here are the final panel art practice sketches I made in the summer. I had been doing really quick 10 minute sketches from TV to speed up my ability to draw comic panels. For this last section of the exercise, rather than sketching from a video, I tried to draw 3 sketches of real comic panels by artists I enjoy as quickly as possible without them becoming unrecognisable.
I began with Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto. I studied two original panels by Kishimoto and then tried to draw and tone them really quickly.
The first one was a picture of Naruto’s sensei Kakashi in a classic ninja pose. This one took about 10 minutes in total…
The second was also from Naruto and has Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura sitting together. This one had a lot more detail in it and took me 15 minutes. I blew my time limit on the background details…
The final study I did was from a comic series called DMZ written by Brian Wood with artwork by Riccardo Burchielli (and sometimes Wood himself). The panel is of the moment a nuclear device is triggered in New York during a fictional future war in the US. It’s an amazing panel. My study took about 15 minutes. Here’s what it looked like…
So, that’s the end of my quick practice studies
(NB: All three panels here were drawn and inked by me, but they are not my own original work – they are studies of the comic art of Kishimoto and Burchielli.)
This week I painted a pair of orcas, a mother and her calf.
Here is my initial drawing design which I did on cartridge paper. Initially I was going to make this a pen and ink drawing but I decided to paint it at the last minute….
Once I was happy with my drawing I masked out the white bits of the whales and went off to visit family for the afternoon while the masking fluid dried…
However, when I got back, and looked at the drawing carefully, I saw this…
They are scratches from my little kitty-cat, Leia. I shouldn’t have been surprised really. Despite being free to sit anywhere, she chooses to sit in various choice spots like…
…on my black work trousers, or…
…on the book I’m currently reading…
… in front of my PC monitor…
…and, more recently, on the clothes airer. I think it is her life’s mission to cover everything of mine in little white kitten hairs!
Anyway, I decided to go ahead with the painting despite her best efforts.
I began by doing a couple of quick thumbnail sketches to give myself some idea of my colours.
I knew I wanted a restricted palette but wasn’t sure what colour scheme to use. I decided on a variation of the left thumbnail.
First I put on some basic watercolour washes in Payne’s Grey and French Ultramarine. I added some yellow for the sunshine and merged this in…
Next I used a similar blue mixture but with more Payne’s Grey and less ultramarine to put in the idea of some rocky land. I painted the sun in Winsor Yellow with some Cadmium Yellow Deep and added a few reflections.
Finally I began to work on the more specific details and finished the painting…
I quite like the finished picture but it lacks precision. I also think I could have managed my watercolour gradients better and more evenly. I think I might have another go at this one sometime using proper watercolour paper and taking more time and care with the execution of each wash.
A while ago I watched the TV series Carnival Row on Amazon Prime. I loved it. Travis Beacham’s story and world was fresh, different and beautifully crafted. I was totally blow away by it. It’s set in a Victorian world where mythical races, collectively called “The Fae”, have been discovered. They include pucks, faeries, kobolds and centaurs. It is wonderfully done. Having watched the series, twice, I felt inspired to paint my own faerie. Last time I posted about this I got to the stage where I’d played around with the the idea and drawn some quick thumbnails.
From there I made a basic sketch of the pose I’d decided on…
Next I used this as a reference for a more careful drawing to use in my final painting…
Then I began to paint. I added a yellow wash with more pigment around the area where my sun was going to be and less elsewhere. (The yellow is a bit stronger on the actual painting than in this photo. I think my camera noticed that I was taking a photo under artificial light and corrected the white balance a bit too far..) Here’s the photo…
Then I painted my larger areas with some initial colour. For the wings I began with a light ultramarine wash with a tiny bit of viridian in it. I tried to keep it light enough that some of the sun colour would show through. Here’s this stage…
Now I wasn’t happy with the brown trousers she is wearing (above) so I reworked them into a blue. It gave me a really nice shade. I see brown as just a darker version of orange so I used that information to help me mix a new blue on the page. Once that was done I added some shading for all of the main colours and shapes and then got into the details – always my favourite part!!!
Here’s the final picture…
(PS: I’ve been unwell this week with a bug going doing the rounds at school. Apologies for any typographical errors etc. Although I wrote this post weeks ago I normally do a final editorial check before publication, however I haven’t been able to do that this week.)
jo fox - adventures in art 