Friday, April 21, 2017

Penguins!


These penguins are dedicated to my favorite one-year-old M (friends' baby), who took a particular liking to the book about the penguin ("企鵝!") in a set of animal board books. That's my fake Chinese calligraphy in the top left.

Upon setting out to draw these penguins, it occurred to me that... I didn't actually know what penguins looked like. If asked to draw a penguin, I would draw something like this:

Ceci n'est pas un manchot.

That had been my concept of penguins since childhood when we had dome-topped sippy cups from Taiwan disguised as penguins--one, pink, and the other, baby blue. A short, squat, upside-down U with no neck, wide-set eyes, and a wide, ducky mouth. I've been drawing penguins like this all my life. Just last week, I drew a bunch of penguins for M, and they aallll looked like this.

It wasn't until I googled "penguins" that I made the earth-shattering discovery that PENGUINS LOOK NOTHING LIKE THIS. I'd been brainwashed by cute Asian merchandise into thinking penguins were dumpy creatures! What had I been drawing all my life??? ... Fine, things weren't quite so dramatic, but I did register the thought that the penguin-shape that I'd been drawing resembles a penguin as much as a heart-shape resembles a biological heart. So I decided to reinvent my penguin-drawing self.

I thought I'd try out something more Quentin Blake or Jean-Jacques Sempé-esque. I've been practicing gesture drawings this week in order to loosen up and add life to my characters, which tend to be stiff and Sanrio-esque. So I started with a gaggle of gesture drawings:


I wanted to caricaturize the flop-over neck of emperor penguins tending to their young, the thin pointy beak, and the long sleek body. The resulting representation of a penguin:

Ceci n'est pas un manchot.

Now instead of a ducky face, he has the face of a narwhal.

In any case, it was fun to explore new ways of representing something in the world instead of just sticking to old habits and conventions.

Ducky-face penguin is still really cute. I'll still use him when dumpy-cute is called for. Also, if you ever need a penguin, you must check out Oliver Jeffers' no-nonsense guide on how to draw a penguin. ;)


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Friday, April 14, 2017

Landscape: Sangti River


Digital landscape painting referencing Sangti River from Google Maps.

I pretty much used one brush the majority of the painting. I was trying to go for Nathan Fowke's level of simplicity in his landscape studies--almost abstract--but I often found myself getting caught up in the details and trying to render trees, rocks, ripples, and people. That is something I will need to continue to practice--simplifying my strokes so that I capture the general impression of things and being sure not to lose the clarity of the composition as a whole.

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Friday, April 7, 2017

First Complete Painting


This is the most complete digital painting I've done thus far. I must admit, I really surprised myself with this one. It's perhaps the best work I've done! There's still something amateurish about it that I can't quite place. A bit overworked in some areas and a bit underworked in others maybe. Or maybe too muddied in the background? Constructive criticism is welcome if you have any thoughts.

I didn't initially set out to paint this. I had started out trying to do a character study for an existing red panda design, but I fell back into old perfectionistic ways and ended up with one seriously crappy-looking red panda. And I mean like Jesus-fresco-restoration-fail crappy. I backed away from my workstation before my overdramatic brain could question what I was doing with my life.

I didn't want to end the day feeling like a failure though; it was important for me to leave feeling at least a smidge hopeful. So after a refreshing walk, I decided to switch approaches and try painting from photo reference (of this adorable Mohini from the Auckland Zoo!). This approach was thankfully much more successful. 

I later revisited the character study that I had initially failed at, this time with a renewed sense of freedom, similar to what I experienced in making the hippo. I will post it another day. :)


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