Little Witch with Frizzy Hair, a DTIYS Art Challenge

Final painting

I have been itching to participate in a "Draw This In Your Style" challenge for a while. When I found Kate P's DTIYS post, I knew I have found my chance. As usual, I started with thumbnails.

First set of thumbnails

DTIYS is unique because I am drawing another artist's character. I need to make myself familiar with the character, so I simply copied the original painting (see 1), noting characteristics like frizzy hair, round glasses, round hat, star stickers on her cheeks, chameleon companions... Her personality seems to be hopeful, bright and optimistic. Finally, the star motif seems important to her.

Next, I looked for a pose and angle the suit the character, but different enough from the original image. I experimented with relaxed/taking a break pose (see 2) and higher angle (see 3). I felt that I did not capture her personality in these, so I started with personality in mind. It seemed to me that she would be curious and excited at new discoveries. What if she opened her magic book the first time and saw the wonders there? What if she was so excited she had a big grin on her face? When if magic literally exploded out, blowing off her hat and her chameleon companions? And so, I drew thumbnail 4.

I was happy with thumbnail 4. Next was the extra push. What could I add, refine, or exaggerate for the final drawing? 

Second set of thumbnails

First, I exaggerated her body, stretching her torso and arms to emphasize her reaction to the explosion (see 5). I also scaled up the book and curved it, but I thought it looked like newspaper.

Next, I fit the sketch in a square frame (see 6). I added the chameleons. One grabbed her collar and hang for dear life, while the other one flew through the air. I started to think about the effects, stars, and background values.

At this point I started to realize that the stars were important, so I experimented with varying star shapes (see 7).

Finally, I experimented with a circular shockwave (see 8). Chameleon reactions were pushed further for comical effect. I found this too busy and distracting, so I more or less adopted 6 for the final drawing.

Pencil of the final drawing

One thing I found while drawing the pencil was her mouth shape. Thus far, I always drew the head full with a mouth shape. See the thumbnails above to see what I mean. The weird shape irritated me but I did not know how to fix it... until I drew a rotated "U" shape for her mouth. I remembered feeling really happy with this.

Inked final drawing

The long curved lines were my worry when I started inking. Then I remembered being loose and accepting slightly inaccurate lines from back when inking "The Year of the Rabbit". So I surprisingly enjoyed inking the effect lines. Stippling was fun as well, but left me wanting a pen that could produce visibly larger dots.

If drawing for DTIYS was slightly harder, coloring was easier. I got to pick colors from the original painting! Yay! Well, I did paint a lighting color plan so I could blend the objects colors to this painting mood and lighting.

Lighting color plan

Other than that, painting was relatively uneventful. All in all, I am really happy with how this image turned out! :)

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 :)

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.