Red Panda – Watercolour

This week I made a quick painting of a Red Panda. Having been unwell for a while I wanted to get my skills up again ready to complete Jim’s portrait. This was a cheeful way to do that especially after seeing Turning Red by Pixar!

I began with a pencil sketch…

Next I mixed up some paint…

Then I added a couple of washes to each area (letting the paint dry completely before adding a second wash). This is the first wash of the whole painting…

Finally I added my wet on dry details – fur, eyes, nose, tree bark etc.

Here is the finished painting…

In real life these animals are so gorgeous! I think the characteristic I like most is that when they feel threatened or try to assert dominance they put their paws up, like they are surrendering to police.

The little guy in the following video is at first threatened by a rock and then tries to dominate it. Finally he figures out it’s just a rock, has a sniff and then goes back inside for a lie down!!! (You might want to prepare for a cuteness overload with this one 😍)…

Orca – Digital Design

This week I created a digital Orca Design. It is of a mother Orca showing the way to her calf.

I have also started working on Jim’s portrait again after having a break following my father’s passing. That painting is at a critical stage – I have everything done and am working on the details of his face. It’s very nerve-wracking to do this because I worry about making a mistake a ruining it. It takes a lot of emotional energy to paint someone in your family so I am taking my time.

I began the orcas with a basic line drawing…

Because I wanted to use digital colour I then made a couple of masks. These are simple digital paintings which mark off certain sections of the design. I can then select these sections easily as I paint. In this case I wanted to be able to deliniate the orcas separately from the rest of the painting and I wanted the separate out the splashing water. Although I actually made quite a few masks for this painting I’m included these ones because I used these the most…

Once I had the masks in place I could start the colouring process. In terms of colour I decided to use a dark blue colour which went down to black at the darkest parts of the image along with some pale yellowy browns. I wanted my design to reference the famous Japanese print of “The Great Wave of Kanagawa” by Hokusai. The colours I chose reflect that. I have loved Hokusai’s work for many years. Here is his famous picture…

This is how I painted the Orcas…

I used a textured brush which gives their skin a lovely feel to it. (NB: Because of the way different screens show images (and because of the night-time settings I was using on my tablet when I painted this) the orcas don’t have the black at the bottom of their bodies which I wanted in these screenshots. This is something I corrected in post production via Photoshop.)

Next I painted the splashing water…

Once that was complete I removed the linework and kept the white “shadow” of the lines as part of my design…

You can see these white “shadows” better once I put in a background…

I kept the background quite simple to make sure that the Orca’s were the “stars of the show”.

Finally I saved the image in Autodesk Sketchbook and pulled it into Photoshop on my laptop to adjust my levels and do some general finishing tasks. Here is the final image…

I really like this picture – it makes me feel safe.

Orca

This week’s drawing is another in the series of animal drawings I am creating using ink and black and white paint. It is of an Orca.  I found it really quite daunting to try to capture in ink and paint the grace, strength and intelligence of one of these animals.  They are so beautiful and so powerful at the same time. They leave me in awe.

I began with a a quick outline sketch…

Then I filled in some of the solid black areas and stippled the edges…

Once this was done I just needed to expand the darker areas and maintain a stippled gradient to complete the ink drawing…

Once my ink drawing was done I added more shadows and highlights with black and white paint to complete the picture…

Reviewing my work, I think the final image turned out fairly well, but I don’t think I was able to capture that deep thumping “Oh!” feeling I get when I see an orca.

Here is a video of a marine life rescue team returning a juvenile orca to the sea.  I love this – mammals loving other mammals – we are family!

Finally, just because I absolutely can’t resist it, here’s another video of a beautiful female Orca (I think) with two calves (one much older) coming across a woman swimming in the ocean just off New Zealand.

The video title suggests that they are playing with her. I can see why they say that. However, I also wonder if the mature female is actually offering friendship to the swimmer. In the wild orcas offer a lot of bodily contact to one another. Some orca experts even describe them as having a behaviour that is the equivalent of a hug…

“I think orcas do the equivalent of hugs. They make a lot of body contact almost constantly. The pattern seen most often is to swim side by side within touching range, usually two at a time”

Howard Gareth, Orca Researcher

It just looks to me like she’s saying to the swimmer – “Hi, do you want to be friends?” or even maybe “Do you want to come with us?” Oh, if I could live in the ocean and this happened to me, I would go!

Anyway, here’s the video…