Welcoming the Year of the Rooster

Happy Lunar New Year!

The last two months saw three major holidays packed close to each other. Lunar new year is the last one. I want to draw something nice as a greeting, so I spent longer than usual on this piece.

Designing was surprisingly easy. I knew the rooster would feature prominently because the new year is the year of the rooster. Seeing stylized, abstracted imagery of rooster gave me the idea of a fiery, perhaps imaginary rooster in the background with Maggie and Faito floating in the foreground.

Coloring was more difficult. I still need to practice more with color pencils to control values. I deliberately chose non-traditional Chinese New Year colors (that is, not red). Fortunately, it is easy to find such color schemes in Singapore. (See these examples for an idea.) So I thought of including pink, yellow, and green.
During execution, I was caught in my fascination with the pleasant sequence of red, orange, yellow, lime green, and green. This sequence fills most of the rooster. However, roosters usually have dark tail feathers. My solution was ending the sequence with cyan, sky blue, and blue. I admit the result is perhaps too much, but I think I kept them in some degree of harmony.

(Ah, on hindsight, perhaps Faito's clothes should have been closer to blue.)

Let me know if you enjoy finding out how I worked. Please don't hesitate to tell me what you want to know more so I can include it in future posts.

Reflecting on Inktober 2016

Recently I posted mostly drawings I did for Inktober 2016. In this post, I am reflecting on how I did during the month of October.

Late September, I began with the thought of just trying out something new. I wanted to know for sure that I could consistently produce finished drawings with quality I would be happy with. The situation became a bit complicated because I made a hasty decision to leave a job at the end of September. I would find myself constantly struggle to strike a balance between job hunting and drawing.

Still, I did commit to develop myself as an independent artist. This gave me a drive that was surprisingly strong; I was surprised to find myself drawing even though I was also looking for a job. This gave me interesting experience I would not get into otherwise. For example, I penciled the background trees for "Noisy" while sitting on a public park, waiting for a job interview, and finished inking it at the Business Canteen (The Terrace) at National University of Singapore.

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.

So I made Maggie and Faito to be around three head tall. They started quarreling like children. And they now walked a more idyllic world (tough arguably I broke this rule in "Sad"). I do not know where this will lead me to, but it will be interesting to explore.

At the end of my Inktober 2016 run, I learned that I could produce more than I usually did. However, this meant I took time from other things in my life. I learned that this is what other people meant when they mentioned "sacrifice".

Related to this, I found involving my wife in my routine helped smoothing things a lot. Before this month, we allowed each other to drive weekend activities as weekend was unfolding. At times this caused unhappiness because one of us could not do what we wanted.
Now that I am committed to finish a drawing, I usually tell her in advance that I need some time to draw on the weekend. This would trigger a discussion for tighter weekend planning. This process actually made us feel closer to each other.

Looking forward, my plan is to draw in themed series. For example, I will group the Inktober drawings as "Maggie and Faito Series" with their adventure as the theme. I am currently drawing a "Film Portrait" series, starting with "Dr Strange".

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Inktober 2016 - 06 - Lost

"Wha-"
Maggie and Faito were lost in a scary forest.

I drew this near Halloween day, so I thought of combining "lost" and scary. This was a relatively fast drawing. I took the composition from a board design I drew back in 2013. I liked the board because it had shadows on the character's face, something I have not tried yet.

I experimented with copic markers for gray shades. I also simplified highlights on Maggie's hair. I am quite happy with the result.

Do you agree? What do you think? Let me know in the comments below :)