On a cold winter's day, a bowl of hot ramen is bliss!

Final painting

The idea behind this painting is simple: in cold winter, entice audience with something warm.

I started with warm bath (see 1). I felt that a good composition would require a lot of effort, so I moved on to the character being close to giant warm dessert (see 2). Note that I attempted to include Little Star characters until this point.

Thumbnail of initial ideas

Next I decided to draw new characters so I can get an easy, symmetrical composition (see 3). I did not know yet what food I was going to draw. I considered soup, tom yum, and hot dessert; and decided to go with ramen because it is probably the most recognizable item.

I learned from "Red Amanita in the Rain" process that I have been lax with composition and color planning. So I continued with more composition options: star-shaped frame (see 4), circular frame (see 5), "speed lines" (see 6), and steam shapes (see 7). I liked all these, but decided to go with steam shape because I thought it would be more unique.

Second round of thumbnails

I went at it a little further and sketched the ornamental shapes (see 8). All these culminated in this pencil work.

Pencil of the final image

I was really happy with it. I thought the composition worked after all the effort I put in... I soon realized that the image was essentially a ramen packaging design! Lol. But I was okay with that. Maybe a familiar look was not a bad thing.

Inked final image

Coloring is another aspect that I had neglected in the last 2 images. I started with color thumbnails (not shown here), but ended up with a straightforward scheme: warm foreground, cool background.

Rough color scheme. The kids still look like zombies :)

I started painting the ramen because I wanted the focus of the image to get more work. I then progressed outward to the children and background. One of the new things I wanted to try was adding drawn shapes and symbols to flat areas. So I added some snowflakes. With restraint, I drew only 3. I wanted to draw more, but I felt it would only make the image busier.

I also attempted to control color saturation, though probably I did not do so well in this aspect. Still, I am happy with the final image. More planning definitely paid off.

Eliciting Emotion and Emotive Conjugation

Here is a trend that I personally find concerning.

By now it it generally recommended that writing should elicit emotion. In fictional writing, this is great; in factual reporting, this should not be done.

One method widely used in reporting is Emotive Conjugation. The same behavior is written differently to portray a person positively or negatively depending on the writer's intention. For example:

• I am firm, you are obstinate, he is a pig-headed fool.
• I am righteously indignant, you are annoyed, he is making a fuss over nothing.
• I have reconsidered the matter, you have changed your mind, he has gone back on his word.

You can read a longer explanation on Wikipedia.

Emotive conjugation is divisive. As readers, we should be aware of it use in media and keep ourselves neutral. We should extract ideas from content we consume, reflect on these ideas, and form our own conclusions.

This is not easy to do in the age of social media. We consume so much content that we hardly have time to reflect and to form our own conclusions. However, this is why this is important to highlight this (and the reason I am writing this post).

What are your thoughts on this topic? Feel free to chime in in the comments.

Amanita Red Mushroom in the Rain

 

Final image

I started with the idea of capturing rainy season because it has been raining frequently in October.

Thumbnails

The first thumbnail, as always, was straightforward. Three friends under an umbrella in the rain.

I experimented with a short comic sequence in thumbnail #2. The ending was not great, so I didn't use these.

In the third thumbnail, I thought of Little Star shining a beam of light in a rain might look cool. This idea went wild with Lise dressing up as a detective, catching the legendary thief Nils.

As I was sketching these thumbnails, an image of amanita red mushroom caught my eye. I did not expect that such a cartoon look can exist in nature! I decided to add it to the image.

Thumbnails with mushroom

I like the first thumbnail; so I just tried out different compositions in thumbnails 2a, 2b, and 2c. On hindsight, this was a red flag. I was happy with a composition too soon. I should have drawn more thumbnails to get a stronger composition. The final drawing has a rather weak composition.

Pencil of the final image

I experimented with using a brush pen to ink the mushrooms. I like the process but do not like the result. I will need to practice using brushpen more before using it for inking.

Inked final image

I struggled with color scheme for this one. I ended up simply adding object colors without a color palette as a guide. I attempted to remedy this by controlling the saturation. Red mushrooms got the most saturation and the strongest color, red. The rest of the image was tinted blue. The result is acceptable. I enjoyed painting the wet highlights most.

Little Star in Gentleman Costume

Happy Halloween!

I started this piece mid September with Halloween theme in mind.

Thumbnail of initial ideas

The first idea (see 1) was a witch who hid behind a bush and stole candies from a child—the main character—with some kind of levitating spell while the child was lured by the witch's cat. I quickly realized this was overly complicated.

To simplify, I focused on candies. I wanted to play with scale, so what about cute characters eating giant candies? 2, 2a, and 2b are explorations of this idea. I was happy with these, but I wanted to try out other ideas...

Second round thumbnails

What if the candies are sentient and looking at the Little Star characters? I drew a first with only Nils, the tiny character. b added Little Star and Lise, the girl, turned to see the viewer. I really liked how Little Star and Lise looked here.

Third round of thumbnails

Finally, I explored focusing on costumes instead of candies. What about Little Star dressing up the first time for his first Halloween? 1A and 1B are experiments with character placement. 2 is an outline of important elements. I decided this would be the image to draw.

The pencil of the final image is below. I changed Lise's pose because I like this one better than the one in thumbnail 2. I added Halloween decorations on the corners: spider web, bats, and pumpkin. I also added clothes and thread rolls to suggest that Lise had just finished making the costumes for Little Star and tiny Nils.

Pencil of the final image

Looking at the thumbnail of the pencil, I found the spider web got too much detail. I decided to simplify it into lines when inking.

Inked final image

While painting, I tested positive for Covid. I rest in bed for 4 days and forgot my original idea of the colors. I do not fully comprehend what happened—I thought I kept the idea in mind; but I could not recall it after I recovered. I reverted to my comfortable painting method of picking color based on what I think a material should look. I was not happy with the final color palette, but the lighting contrast is hopefully strong enough to support the final image.

Reflections 2022

I feel it is time for a reflection post since I have not written one in a while.

In the first half of 2018 I was consumed with penciling and inking "Avengers: Infinity War Spread". I then spent around a year to finish coloring the final painting. On hindsight, this was an expensive experiment.

Having finished the long project, I got lost in the many possible directions I could go. I kept drawing, though the artworks were individual works with no common theme. In early 2020, I started the "Dragon Ball x MCU Poster" project. I thought I could get more audience if I painted characters people already knew. I finished the final painting in November 2021.

I did not realized this at the time, but these 2 long projects showed that I needed to pay more attention to backgrounds and composition. I did, however, realize that I was chasing a mirage. Drawing fanarts would not get me to the goal that I formulated at the end of 2017:

I also decided that I would focus on creating a world for children of around primary school age. On that age, I was reading comics like Smurfs, Johan and Pirlouit, and Steven Sterk. Even though I don't remember much of the stories, the adventures and fantastical worlds formed an impression on me. I would like to draw stories like that--evergreen stories that generation after generation of children will enjoy.

Around March this year I started drawing things I find fascinating in my childhood, such as cardboard house and playing with cars over a make-believe town. "Dream Bedroom" was, in my opinion, a concept that nicely fit my goal. It captured the fuzzy idea of what I wanted to draw. In 2017 I thought this idea was children stories. I simplified that into a series of images, which may or may not end up as stories later on. The essence is that an image must capture bitter-sweet feelings from my childhood.

Going forward, my plan is to draw a series of such images--so my long term goal has not changed--only this time I am paying more attention to building audience:

• I will post regularly every Saturday.
• Each post is a square image. No more irregular shaped image.
• I will make composition my starting point. No more character posing in front of an empty background.
• I will post an image in 3 posts: pencil, ink, and color. The 3 posts will tidy up my Instagram profile. No more chaotic mix of pencil, ink and color images.
• All posts are scanned images. No more blurry, unevenly lit images captured using phone camera.
• The 3-post schedule also gives me around 2 weeks to color an image. My mini goal is to improve my painting speed. (Though I hope quality will improve slightly.)

I will reflect again in around a year. Hope to see you then.

Dream Bedroom Miniature

 

I have always wanted to illustrate a childhood fascination, things that wowed me in my formative years. One such thing is miniatures. Mini-sized version of daily things are fascinating to me. This is the fuzzy concept I had in mind when I started sketching thumbnails.

Very quickly I realized how fuzzy the idea was. What miniature do I draw? At what angle do I present it?

I took inspiration from the manga "Yamada to Kase-san". There is a scene in which Kase went into Yamada's room the first time. So the miniature is a room... a dream bedroom. The camera angle is slightly high, high enough to display furniture and decorative items in the dream bedroom.

Plus, I instinctively knew I wanted to include a girl reacting to the dream bedroom.

Thumbnail sketch

In this thumbnail, I thought of an actual bedroom. I needed to add enough things in it to make it believable as a bedroom. So, bedroom, pillows, study table, chair, windows, school bag... I felt something was still missing.

I noticed I used straight lines in this thumbnail. The idea is a dream bedroom, so I used soft, round shapes in the actual sketch. The bed, study table and chair became rounded. Next, the bedroom is probably a girl's bedroom. So I added items that are more feminine in my mind: flowers on bed, plant pot, giant bunny plushie, sandals, mirror on table, and candle.

At this point the momentum of ideas was enough to finalize the sketch. Next comes painting colors.

I experimented with an almost monochromatic color scheme with a touch of complementary accent colors. Once I was happy with the colors, I started thinking about lighting.

I wanted the lighting to have a dramatic effect; on the other hand, I thought strong shadows on the bedroom would work against the fluffy cute feeling I was going for. So the bedroom got a diffuse lighting from the top, while the girl was backlit.

Finally, while working on the final touches I received some helpful feedback from friends in my community, I am grateful for that :)

Gardener Girl, a "Draw This In Your Style" Art Challenge

 

It all started in a dark, rainy day... YouTube recommended me a video by Mimimoo Illustration that day (which may or may not be dark now that I think about it).

I feel that sharing one's art journey is very personal and takes courage; and Mimi's journey was full of twists and turns. I was intrigued and thought I'd check out her Instagram page. As I scrolled through the artworks, I felt inspired. Finishing one artwork each day definitely made a big difference!

Something clicked in my mind while seeing all these cute illustrations: my art thought process was missing composition and background/midground/background elements. Thus far, I almost always drew a character on an empty background and found myself not knowing what background to add. This, I realized, is a wrong order! I should start with a composition in mind and add a character in it.

As it happened, Mimi was having a "Draw This In Your Style" challenge, so I applied what I learned and drew this.

Thumbnail sketches

Dino and Chicky in Reverse Hats

The idea for these began in October 2018 when I sketched cute animals in Halloween-themed hats, shown below. 

The starter sketch

I don't quite remember why a chicken and a dinosaur. Even then, I already knew that Chicky is a girl, thus the witch hat and wig, while Dino is a boy. I did not know what to do with them and simply marked the sketch to follow up someday.

In late 2021, I revisited Dino because I want a logo for dennyiskArt website. Below is my design process.

Dino design process

I wanted a quirky logo, thus the chicken hat and antique glasses on (1). Then I drew (2), a larger sketch of the head to find the head silhouette ("Sherlock Holmes hat") and refine the elements.

I liked (2), but it was too busy for a logo. I simplified the elements in (3) and tested the silhouette using a pumpkin hat. I preferred chicken hat, as shown in (4), and finalized the logo by adding a circle frame and a pencil holding hand.

I didn't use the image as website logo, but I thought it would be funny to pair it with a chicken in a dino hat. Accidentally, the circle frame was egg-shaped, a plus in my mind because both dino and chicken hatch from an egg.

Chicky design process

I sketched (1) around the same time a Dino's (1). I was not happy with it because the silhouette was not as strong as Dino's. Well, since Dino had rounded shapes, I thought I would use square shape for Chicky, as shown in (2) upper; and then soften it as shown in (2) lower.

After that, it was just a matter of adding details to get to (3). I drew (4) to match the circle frame and explored some variation in proportions. As the handwritten note says, I found (4) not cute. The final drawing, thankfully, was much cuter.

It was relatively easy to draw these because I love the idea. Painting was tough because I did not fully understand that look I wanted. I ended up taking a long time painting these.

"Dino" painting process

At the start I needed some time to find a cohesive color scheme. I needed to keep checking the saturation as well. I just revisited painting digitally, so I took around a month to finish the painting.

"Chicky" painting process

With "Chicky", I struggled with the shadows. Do I make them colder to contrast with the warm midtones? Are the shadows too cold? In the middle of the painting I decided to revise the shape of the shadows because I thought the nose part of the hat should cast more shadows on her face. Similar to "Dino", this took me a month to finish.

All in all, I am rather happy with these two paintings. They look cute and fun. What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments :)

Piccolo x Dr Strange

 

Final poster

I took the release of "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" as opportunity to color this image. I drew this as a part of Dragon Ball x MCU poster mini project.

In the process of coloring, I soon realized this piece was boring. After some thinking and panicking, I vaguely recalled the 70-30 rule of composition. I promptly search Youtube for videos to strengthen my understanding and found this video useful: Best kept composition secret - the 30-70 rule

In my case, I decided that 70% of the figure would be in shadows and the remaining 30% would be lit. The result is the following image.

After applying 30-70 rule

The image was still boring. On hindsight, the reason was because I did not plan the final composition. I began playing around with different methods to save this painting. One of such experiments resulted in this.

Dr-r-r-.. Strange-ange-nge-...

It was not bad, but it did not solve the problem with the lower portion of the image: either it was empty (by including only 1 set of legs) or extremely busy (by including all sets of legs). At that point it occurred to me to change the image orientation to landscape and the final poster above was the outcome.

Lesson learned: plan the final composition from the beginning.