The Year of The Rabbit

Final painting

This image started with 2 thoughts:

• draw a romantic image for Lunar New Year,
• experiment with tall, vertical image. 

On my sketchbook, I made this note:

• Rabbit!
• Heavier lineworks.
• Color with markers?

These are the possible themes I thought I would like to explore. With those notes, I started drawing a few exploration thumbnails. I drew a rabbit flying down among clouds (see 1). I probably thought the clouds could be rendered with heavier line works. I then explored placement of the rabbit relative to the moon (see 2). Next, I added a trail of clouds, roughly "S" shaped (see 3).

Exploration thumbnails

At this point, I decided on 1:2 size ratio—that is, the height of the image is twice the width.

Learning from previous mistake, I sketched another idea (see 4) just to convince myself that I really wanted to go with the initial idea. Once convinced, I drew the rough composition (see 5). 

Second round of thumbnails

When transferring this thumbnail to large paper, I found it difficult to finalize the shape of the cloud trail. I wanted to have some characteristics of Chinese paintings, but I also wanted the lines to look appealing.

I introduced 2 new elements to sweeten the image: peach blossom petals and butterflies. I chose these elements because they are common in Lunar New Year imagery. I also hoped that they would strengthen the feeling of Chinese painting.

Pencil of the final image

Next comes inking. I was really worried about inking long curvy lines. The drawing is just slightly smaller than A3 size, larger than my usual drawings. I decided to stick to drawing pens and concentrated on drawing long strokes with shoulder as pivot. The first few lines were nerve-wracking! Soon I grew confident with this process and actually felt sorry when all the clouds were inked.

Inked final image

I started coloring with color thumbnails. I painted these in sequence, left to right.

• First I painted object colors. The sky is blue; the moon is pale yellow; rabbit is grey. The exception is clouds. They are pink because I wanted a romantic feeling.
• Next I painted with the idea of glowing rabbit. I liked the contrast; but I found the feeling not romantic.
• Then I painted with the idea of romantic. This is subjective, so this scheme is probably the most difficult to understand. The sky is pink; the moon is pale white; the clouds rabbit is orange and the clouds are orange-pink.

At this point, I compared the 3 schemes and made notes to myself. I left the painting and returned to it the next day. I painted the final scheme, the one on extreme right. This is my choices of combining ideas I found from the previous 3 schemes.

Color thumbnails

While painting, I added cherry branches to break up the space and add depth. To enhance the feeling of Chinese painting, I drew a "DennyIskArt" seal instead of my usual signature.

I am happy with the final image. To me it feels like a romantic Chinese painting for the Year of the Rabbit :)