Floating Lemons: Bit by Bit Blog

28: My dog Bertha, step-by-step!

I'm back in Malaysia trying to settle paperwork and visa documentation! This is just after spending a whole 5 days lugging all my stuff (how on earth did I manage to accumulate so much ALREADY?!) to the car and back and then a 40 minute drive to the village and 40 minutes back, as I was moving into a new rental home in the village I'm hoping to live in! So it's been hectic to say the least. Have barely had time to think!

But today I finally was able (in between a million zillion phone calls in search of documents, translators, lawyers oh dear) to a bit of drawing. And as I'm missing my dogs, I pulled a photo of one of them out and sat down to play with the watercolour pencils I bought when I got here. And I've managed to scan a few steps of the progress too!

Going backwards, here's the final  drawing:

With water added to the pencils and then a final touch-up with the colours minus water (to darken the shadows mainly) and with a B pencil. I am actually quite pleased with the end result despite the fact that it's not exactly quite the way I thought it would look :)

This was the almost-final pencil stage, before adding water. I found it quite difficult to work with such soft pencils (I'm used to hard, fine sharp ones!) on textured paper even though it was quite finely textured. But I didn't go into too much detail as I wasn't sure if the water would just wash it all away! I also had to alter her paw, as I first drew it a bit too short.

And here's the pencil sketch. I'd already added a bit of colour when I thought of scanning in the progress, but you can still see the beginning rough sketch.

And finally, this is the photo I used as reference! Ok, so I made a few mistakes, but I think I managed to capture her personality and that's what has made me happy with it. Next I'm going to have to do her sister or there's going to be a huge upset in the family :D

Brown Bertha Card at Zazzle! :D

122: Mouse Enjoying Tea

My second ever attempt at watercolour! Very messy I'm afraid but I really enjoyed doing this so I might just do more. It was also much faster finishing this (despite my clumsiness!) than it would have been using coloured pencils, though I'm not giving those up anytime soon :)

107: Maple Leaf

PS: Have just realised that this is perfect for EDM Challenge #34: Draw a fall leaf! :)

Canada Day is coming up, so I thought I'd draw a maple leaf in all its autumn splendour as I love the colours.

I've had a close friend visiting, so have been busy but still managed to find time to experiment with actual watercolour (as opposed to pencils) ... The first attempt was so pathetic that a guinea-pig would have cowered in shame, so will post the second attempt here, not because I think it was much better but because I hope one day to be able to look back at it and laugh once I've mastered (hah) watercolours ...

I sketched it in pencil and printed the pencil sketch onto watercolour paper for this. Then used coloured pencil on the original sketch.