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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?

I took a two hour break from my character project on Saturday to retain a little bit of my sanity. I went down to Red Dot Museum to check out the OIC Portrait Day at MAAD Market (Market for Artists and Designers). OIC (Organisation of Illustrators Council) is a collective of local Illustrators, they welcome others who love drawing to join in on portrait day too. It’s really an awesome event for people who love to draw (and be drawn).

Reached there around 4+ and promptly started the first ink drawing in the bottom row there.

Here’s the fruit of my 2 hours spent there, minus a pen drawing of a couple which they actually bought! Sadly, I didn’t manage to get a picture of it before it went off to its new home (need to bring a camera next time), cause I really liked it. It was a rather cartoony pen drawing that made them look a bit younger, definitely a fun style. Think I’ll be playing more with ink and wash next time, or copics. My pencil portraits are just too slow and kinda blah looking.

Meeting the OIC Gang was awesome too, they’re an immensely friendly bunch of people. Amazingly an old friend from secondary school was there too, as well as one from my NS days. Talking about drawing, brush pens and sketchbooks over dinner was great. It’s left me with the urge to go down to Bras Basah again and hunt down more art supplies!

Added the full drawings to my gallery.. Speaking of which, I think I need to do a bit of restructuring there as well as the site on the whole.. Hmm, something to think about when I’m more free in a few months time.

Hey, anyone interested in coming along for next month’s Portrait Day? It’s on July 5th, 2 – 7pm. Lemme know if you are and we can head down together.