Jónsi Project Production Diary, part 6

So since starting this painting I have ruined it, done a second version, ruined that, moved house, put the unfinished third version into storage and...forgotten about it, for a while.

Finally dug it out of storage again and got to work on the figure.

tiny stories

Happy May Day!

HitRECord is putting together work for another Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, so I'm hastily scrobbling things together in the hope that I can get into this little indie art book.

This is a standalone illustration for a writer to build a tiny story around. Oh look, mermaids again. Speaking of which, if you like mermaids and you haven't seen the blog The Wide-Eyed Legless, you are missing out on a lot.

This is an illustration for ubespidermonkey's tiny story 'Jealous Stars':

Stars are jealous of city lights.
So once in a while, they cut the power.  

dinotopia

I was getting tired of drawing ridiculously well-dressed men and women and pretty objects. What is the perfect antidote? Dinosaurs!

James Gurney's Dinotopia is the most wonderful book you can ever buy for your kid or yourself. My copy is 20 years old and I still get a kick and some drawings out of it. Worth every penny.

view master - a progression of colour

Raw: Pen & Ink Sketch fountain pen, Pilot G-Tec C3, red Uniball Vision Elite and scraps cut out from a Vogue ad. Dress inspired by a Sarah Burton design for Alexander McQueen.
Coloured in Photoshop Elements - too flat!
Caran d'Ache coloured pencils - scanned much lighter than they looked on the paper. No whitewashing, please!
Adding the Photoshop colour layers gave a solid foundation and the pencils enriched the colour. Hooray! Now...where are her legs? oO

fashion sketch stuff

I've been on a fashion sketching streak lately!

Mechanical pencil, blue Pentel animation lead.

Mechanical pencil, Faber-Castell 2B lead--wonderful for shading.

Top cut out of a Free People catalogue, Pen and Ink Sketch fountain pen, extra fine, Pilot G-Tec C3 gel pen, and a bit of white Rotring ink for when I made a stupid mistake and crosshatched where I shouldn't have >_<

POLEMICA (Raw)

ugh you guys I have been drawing tiny flowers for two days straight and I am sick of it

...but look!

POLEMICA

I saw a girl on Guerrisms.com in a coat and a hoodie and she reminded me of my friend Abrar. My fashion obsession at that point kind of ran into my thoughts about how the Arab Spring reminded me of the EDSA Revolution in the Philippines. Add a twist of how I've been annoyed with random misogyny around the internet lately and voilá.

('No, commander, the word means "What is that in the table?" ')*

*sorry, Pratchett joke†
†oh look, another one!

WIP (warning: pink)

Ahahaha this is taking forever but I feel pretty good about it. I wish the red pen had contrasted better though; I should have used the violet one all the way. Sakura colour turned out bolder in the scan.

being bored in cafes is slightly productive

Drawn with Pen and Ink Sketch Extra Fine fountain pen.

Red Hood - shadow puppet prototype

I'm working on some shadow puppets based on the Indonesian tradition of Wayang Kulit, for the Red Riding Hood tie-in on hitRECord.org. Luckily I have the 2 puppets I got in the market in Bali. The piercing is really way more intricate than this, but I've simplified it for a lot of reasons.

More soon.

more on the theme of mermaids

Did more work on the Nile guardian from this post. I cannot believe how long it takes me to do detailed watercolours. One of my art heroes is PJ Lynch and I wonder how much time he spends layering his illustrations. Also I should think through my light sources more carefully before I start to fill in everything.

Here's something I did ages ago but re-scanned. I lost all the data on my other computer when it crashed, including the files for my yakuza mermaids. Still one of my favourite ideas.

This is also an old one, but I don't think I ever posted this anywhere.