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I’ve been working on this watercolour piece for my Grandma’s birthday when I can. I’ve been meaning to paint this for a long time, the original photograph has faded beyond the abilities of photoshop to save it.

Doing portraits of someone I know and love feels pretty different from others. The experiences I’ve had with them, memories of being young and taken care of – it transcends the technical concerns. More difficult in striving for a likeness, yet easier in simple ways..

I took another 2 hours to finish this up.. Despite the slow progress I really enjoyed painting this. I forsee my $1 portable watercolour kit will become more and more valuable as time goes by.

Working on watercolour paper is great too, the paper is thick enough to withstand multiple layers of colour without warping or getting all furry like normal sketchbook paper.

Hellboy was a good choice to ease into using watercolours again, monochromatic as he is.. Next subject will be a colour portrait.. Time to up the ante..

What a packed but fruitful week it’s been. On top of revisiting my piano & violin studies, I’ve been setting up stuff for my two younger brothers, gymnastics class for one and piano for the other. Started this sketch of Hellboy on an A5 sized pad of watercolour paper during the older one’s gymnastics class, referenced from a copy of Empire Magazine that was lying around. Took about 40 minutes to get this far – yeap, real slow.. Going to forge ahead and finish it up in.. another hour. I’m being way too careful, time to loosen up and paint more!

Things are getting exciting for me, lots of activities lined up in the coming weeks. Fly By Night Video Challenge 2008 is on from tomorrow till Sunday. It’s gonna be insanity once again just like the 48HR Film Festival, but the best kind of insanity of course. I’ll also get the chance to put the 3dsmax 2009 trial through its paces. Gonna make the most out of those 30 days.

December will start off with the first OIC Portrait Day I’ll be free to attend in 2 months, Forest Adventure, hopefully A Job, more secret ninja training sessions, numerous gatherings with family & friends and to top it off, Christmas! Followed by New Year resolutions and subsequently gaining lots of weight from Chinese New Year foood… but.. I think I’m getting ahead of myself here.. I’ll be enjoying this December that’s for sure..

Armed with my $1 mini watercolour box, brushpen and various drawing implements, I took part in my second OIC Portrait Day at the Maad Market at Red Dot Museum AKA Monthly Stress Reliever/Practically Free Life Drawing Session.

It was great (and terrifying) to try out painting with watercolour for the first time in years. Picked up some good tips from the artists around me as well. Probably would not have tried it have it not been for the Full Colour theme of this month’s Portrait Day.

I was looking for one of those tiny watercolour sets around Bras Basah, but upon realising that they all cost in excess of $30 I decided to find something a little cheaper. Daiso is a good solution in these situations when you need cheap spare parts to use in unintended ways.

These two are 2 of the 3 paintings out of 10 in the 4.5 hours that I think weren’t too bad, the third being my favourite which I:

1. Didn’t realise was sold yet again, cause I was busy trying to draw the next sitter.

2. Forgot to photograph, despite bringing a camera and taking pictures of practically everything else.

Ah well.. I wrote the link to 4dpencil on the back of the drawing, so if you two happen to find your way here I’d really appreciate it if you could send me a scan or something. Anyway I’m really glad you liked it!

Overall I’m still pretty slow, but faster than last month, which is always a good thing. Then again in this case I usually budgeted 5 – 10 minutes on establishing the proportion in pencil before haphazardly trying out different colouring approaches in watercolour. I feel like I need to do more eye studies, cause most times the eyes I’m drawing are kinda.. uh.. the stereotypical eye and not really that nice to behold. In some instances like this one I think it worked, but for others it’s borderline anime eye syndrome.

It was pretty fun as expected. I dragged two of my project group members along, my mom, aunt and cousin turned up out of the blue, and on top of that 2 of my friends from poly happened to be there as well. And to the one that was sick and couldn’t make it, well there’s always next month yeah?

Well, CG Overdrive was really great.. too bad there wasn’t a lucky draw this year though, last year’s had me drooling at the insanely huge Wacom tablets, software like Zbrush, and other generally awesome goodies for the taking.. Still, it was inspiring once again to listen to these people who’ve been out there in the industry doing such amazing stuff. I was kinda stressing out on the plot for my group’s final film project the whole week though, but we’ve finally got it down..

I love how the brush pen and sepia ink I bought really broaden the possibilities of what I can do on the train every day. The door and girl concept drawings were done on the way to school, while the lighting study of the hallway was pencilled on the way home and coloured after.

The best thing about it is since it’s diluted sepia ink, it doesn’t bleed through the page like copics do.. Of course the paper isn’t really meant for wet media and gets kinda crinkly when I close the book, but it’s pretty great for on the go sketches. If only it would fix my problems with anatomy too… but that’s another story..