I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted a drawing. Or since I last sat down with colored pencils and sketchbook in hand. What with moving home, a string of visitors and then a trip back to Malaysia, I've been chaotically busy and then just plain exhausted. I'm still not feeling 100% normal, but am settling in at my own pace now, and have finally indulged in some much needed drawing therapy ...
While in Kuala Lumpur I took more photos of my mum's garden and her heliconias as I love them. And, finding my mind blocked and my imagination stuttered, I grabbed one of those photos and decided to sit down and enjoy the vibrant colours while attempting to put them down on paper. Here's a bit of a step-by-step of the process:
First a quick sketch to place things and make sure I have size and proportions right. The pencil strokes were so light that I had to up the contrast on the scanned image, which is why the paper seems so dark here.
Then I begin very faintly layering in some colour so as to give myself an idea of what to use and what goes where ...
Still layering, darkening as I go along. This is the part where I decide that I hate the whole drawing and should never have started it and it's going to be abysmal. Usually I take a break here and come back to it later. And carry on, fingers crossed.
Once I have a better idea of placement of colour and shade, I start on the serious layering process, going down the drawing as I do so. I'm using about 7 different reds, pinks and oranges here, 4 greens, one dark blue and one purple pencil. I just keep layering ...
And voila, here's the finished product. I finalize the whole drawing with a B pencil to just add a bit of a darker shadow to some parts and outline it, though I do try not to make it look too "outlined". The process isn't as yet over however ... I still have to then prepare the drawing for uploading to my stores!
So. The final step is to isolate the drawing from the background so that I can then save it as a png file and allow the customers at my zazzle store to add or change the background colours if they so wish. This may sound easy, but cropping the drawing from the background is pretty time-consuming. I love my wacom tablet and pen! Without them it just wouldn't be possible ...
And finally here are two cards that I created from the drawing. One for Mother's Day (well, it IS from my mother's garden!) and one, below, as a slightly more colourful Birthday card :)
Altogether it's taken me two days just to finish all this up, though that's primarily because this drawing is larger than the ones I normally work on. And now I have to upload it to the rest of my online stores, so I'd better work on that now so that I can begin a new drawing tomorrow! Cheers.
