Daily drawings with charcoal and a black pen

To sketch faster, I decided to draw an animal a day. Here are the animals I’ve sketched with charcoal last week. It took about 10 to 15 minutes to finish one.

Some drawings!

I was busy for a while to prepare for the art exhibition that I am also in. It’s done a couple of days ago. Sadly I couldn’t go due to personal problems. Anyway, some of these drawings are done before the show to come up with ideas and others were after I finished painting for the show to relax a bit.

-I like classical illustrations. This one is obviously from Alice in wonderland. I found the original image on google and drew it to practice. It looks a bit different from the original.
(the white rabbit, pencil)

– I am quite bad at drawing people’s faces. But somehow drawing a kid’s face is less difficult than drawing grownups. You can still see some problems. I like how her eyes turned out. (a girl, pencil)

Below three drawings were the sketches for the art exhibition but I came up with different ideas later on (I will post them later.) As you know, the first one is a Dodo bird. I read about extinct animals and decided to draw them with a gift box. I will paint them later either pen or water color.

-> (a dodo, pencil)          (left) a great auk, pencil

(right) Japanese sea lion, pencil

Good news is that I got faster in sketching. Below buildings were done pretty quick.

 – (an owl head, pen)

not so productive lately…

We moved to another town a month ago… so we were very busy sorting out things around the new apartment. After that, of course, I got horribly sick… Anyway, I didn’t get to do much paintings. And some of them failed… But I am going to post them anyway…

Satu bulan yang lalu, kami memindah ke kota yang lain. Jadi kami sangat sibuk. Setelah itu, sakit terus… Oleh karena itu, aku tak bisa menggambar banyak… Gambar-gambar di bawah tidak bagus… 😦

The owl from Blade Runner. I love the movie. The sketch was good but I failed while painting it… I guess I used the dark color too early and it made me hard to adjust the brightness in the painting. And the right eye is not quite right… And also the chest…

I need to paint this one but… got so discouraged after painting the owl. But will paint it soon.

Fox… in pencil. I am going to try the same fox in water color later. Something is not quite right but I think it’s ok for now… whew~

water color paintings

The paintings I posted recently were actually painted a while ago. We’ve just moved from Vietnam to South Korea so I was quite busy. I couldn’t paint for a couple of months due to the big moving. A few days ago, I couldn’t stop thinking about paintings so I bought some water color paints and paper. These are my most recent paintings. I only used water color. They are in orders I painted.

1. This is my first trial of not sketching at all. I am quite proud of how it turned out. I was trying to give details on the eye and veins in the ears.

I was trying to give details on the eye and veins in the ears. And painted the rest roughly and simple.

 

2. There are some mistakes on the goat. But I like the way of its looking. As you see, I like to paint asymmetrical such as eyes and ears. Gord asked me why it’s wearing a scarf. I said “Because it’s cold outside.” I gave some dark blue lines near the eyes at the end.

3. I saw this amazing wolf photo online(National Geography). If you type ‘wolf’ you can find it easily. I tried to use the different method. I failed painting the background. You can tell I am more used to oil color.

4. Another photo I found in National Geography. I wanted to give a sweet background so I put a mushroom house. Some it looks like a fox but I think I got used to water color painting finally.

Thank you!! Grazie!!

Darwin

I am atheist(thanks god!!) but sadly I was raised in christian family (a long story…). Anyway, I grew up seeing paintings of super friendly looking Jesus on the wall. Now I have my own house, I wondered what kinds of paintings will be appropriate for atheist’s house. Of course, scientists!! My first scientist portrait was Charles Darwin for thanking him saving me from the religion.

Plus, this hedgehog is the first oil painting that I signed. I gave it to my friend, 소영.

Kids with a ball

I draw this boy out of my head. I want him to hold a ball. Gord gave me an idea to paint in series… so there are three of them. They are all holding a ball. Sadly, I overdid the last girl with a ball, so it looks too bad to put online… Anyway, I had fun drawing & painting them.

(water color)

    

  

pencil drawings and water color paintings

Here are some of my pencil sketches before I show my water color paintings.

(Right drawing above-pencil) I really like the cat on the right how its eyes are asymmetrical and patterns on the head. I was looking at a kitten and made some changes on the right side of its face.

<- (pencil) I came up with this girl out of my head. After drawing her left eye, I wanted to draw her right eye different. She doesn’t look like me at all except her hair style. But my friends said that we have the same look on the face. I guess this is my first portrait then…

–  My very first water color painting.

– My second water color painting. I also used ink pens.

When I was a bit depressed working in IT company in Indonesia, this cartoon gave me some laughs. Courage the cowardly dog is a great cartoon. The dog named Courage always face some strange, horrifying situation that scare him so bad. He always saves Muriel who takes care of courage at the end.

I thought what if he meets the ghost of his dead twin, so I painted this one. I used blue, black and purple to paint the left dog.

Gnome

One day, Gord was pointing out an interesting fact that Koreans are familiar with characters from books he read as a kid such as Gnome or Peter rabbit, but they actually haven’t read those books. Then, how they know all those characters? Well, Peter rabbit is one of the popular prints on the stationary like pens or note books in Korea. That’s how people know about those. I don’t remember how I get to know about gnome but I guess it was the same way because I haven’t read the gnome. Gord told me gnome was his mom’s favorite, so I decided to paint one for her. And I end up painting two. I searched gnome drawings by Poortvliet on google. You can check his original drawing by googling ‘gnome poortvliet’.

1. This was the first one I painted. I loved the story there.

2. I painted the first one in a very small sized canvas to send it to my mother in law. She liked it but I thought the painting was too small sized… (gnomes are actually very tiny)
The next thing happened was that I was painting gnome in a giant canvas. It was really fun to paint in a large canvas. The gnome became 88cm high.

I was surprised that painting his face was not so difficult. It turned out pretty good. The hardest part for me was his shirts and the belt. I painted the shirts over 4~5 times…

His beard was too white that he looked a bit like santa, so I gave some shadow here and there to express the roughness.

other animals I drew: a polar bear, an elephant and a white tiger

1. A polar Bear on the moon
I got into polar bears while watching Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey. I am a big fan of Cosmos… Anyway, I don’t remember which episode it was but it explains how polar bears were the result of mutation that survived and spread due to their strong advantage in nature.

So I sketched two pieces but only could finish the second one.

 – I never finished this one…

Like the flying pig I painted, I want the polar bear to walk somewhere exciting and interesting. In the end, I put the bear on the moon. This idea came up to me for two reasons. One is, of course, I was watching TV show, Cosmos. The second is I want to use a round shape in my painting.

– I usually put a rough sketch with my pencil. Sometimes I need to put one more layer of gesso because it becomes quite messy…

I forgot to take a photo of the completed piece before I gave it to Malcolm (Our friend, Chris and Nhu’s son). But it was pretty close to the above photo.

Funny thing was many grownups and high school students(whom I taught) took a while to see what’s going on this painting. On the other hand, a 10 year old girl said ‘A bear on the moon!’ as soon as she saw this.

2. An elephant

After painting the elephant for the first time, I realized how big its head is.

3. A white tiger

I just painted the lines of the white tiger. Except the jaw, I really like this painting. I was thinking about putting pupils but I didn’t do it, which was a good choice. I enjoy drawing animals and people’s faces asymmetric.

pen drawing

During high school, I sucked in art classes. It usually took a lot of time for me to finish paintings and drawings, so 50 min classes were never long enough to draw something. Besides, I didn’t know how to hold a brush or a pen with less strength… After working on oil paintings, which is easier medium for beginners, I was ready to try pens and pencils.

Last two years, I did private language teachings as a part time job. Students paid lesson fee in an envelop. I usually used those envelops again as their original purpose, but sometimes I sketched on them.

Very rough but I like it. The cat was drawn on the back.

I tried to draw Albert Camus but it turned out very different and strange. I used my marking red pen to sketch him.

Anyway, now I also use water colour and charcoal. I will update that soon!