Floating Lemons: Bit by Bit Blog

29: My dog Bella, step-by-step

Well, Having drawn Bertha I had to do Bella as well. So here she is, And I've included the step-by-step progress as I did in the previous drawing. Still a lot to learn but I'm pretty pleased with these first attempts at watercolour pencil :) Here's the final drawing with water added and some touching up with the pencils after ...

Here it is with just coloured pencil before the addition of water:

And here's the first pencil sketch:

And finally, the photograph I used as reference. I miss my dogs!

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

6: Red Hot Mug

Red Hot Mug interpreted as a card and Love card on Zazzle :D

I miss my Daylight Lamp!! I used it to draw by, in the evenings, so I could still see the true colour of my pencils. As it is, I had to stop last night in the middle of this drawing as I no longer knew what reds I was using. and I continued it today in the clear light of day, sitting by the window.

I bought this lovely deep red mug at the markets last week. I haven't done it any justice as far as its real colour is concerned, but this was my attempt nonetheless :) I used watercolour pencils so scanned the above once I'd finished drawing it in case I destroyed it when I "painted" the water on. Below is the final result, which turned out neither as well nor as badly as I'd imagined:

97: Lotus

Had another deadline and didn't get much sleep last night. Good news is that it's just about over! Am tired though, so it probably isn't the best time for starting to experiment with a new medium, but I picked up those watercolour pencils and went for it :) Well, ok it's not QUITE that different, being that it's still pencil work but hey, I added water. It's a start.

This is from a photograph, one of several, that I took of some beautiful lotus flowers (at least I assume that that's what they are, someone correct me if I'm wrong please!) in a lake right in front of the Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I haven't done them any justice, but really enjoyed using the watercolour pencils, though am not sure if I used them as I'm meant to. After I watered in the original background 'washes' I filled in more detail (yes, I'm anal!) with the pencils and an H graphite. I'm quite proud of it only because I'm finally playing around with an almost different medium. Bit by bit ...