Feather

My first Crayon piece in a long time. Somehow, I feel, my photos do not do justice to the startlingly vivid colours oil pastels can produce. The inspiration struck late at night and the rendering was quick if iterative.

Mermaid

This is one of those pieces that you can't quite rationalize as an artist. I had been working on the negative space in this painting for a few days and then took a break for almost a month before I got back to it. I'm not sure if I really intended for her to be in this picture but she is :)

Fashion; agony or ecstasy

In Collaboration with Vasu Gandhi

Odds

The Burning Bush (in Crayons)

I was asked by my sister to draw the burning bush (from the bible story) after a week of having drawn the glow and shadows around the central point of the light I still had the focus of the picture untouched. Then today in a sudden bout of inspiration I was able to complete the drawing. The profile revealed here was not drawn intentionally but traced from an outline I thought I saw coincidentally while I was examining the picture for some ideas for drawing the subject. 

Crayon Tutorial

On the insistence of a friend I'm attempting to create a step wise tutorial for my Crayon Painting process.

As with the creation of all works of Art I have a picture of what I want to draw in my mind. This phase in itself varies from person to person. Some people claim to have a clear image in their mind of what they are going to draw before they start. Others like me start of with an impression and add details as they find them during their process. 

I start with coating the paper with a thin layer of primer. This is a color which sets the hue of my painting. I usually peel a crayon and use it's side to apply this layer in soft broad strokes for economy of effort. 

I've discovered that crayons (especially oil pastels) hold well on paper and can be a pain to try to remove in case corrections are required. It is also much easier to add a dark color on top of a light color than the other way around. This usually manifests as a problem when I'm trying to add highlights on a object towards the completion of the painting.  I therefore prefer to think about the broad highlights I'm likely to need and apply a second layer of primer on my papers usually with white to block out the areas where I will need the highlights.

As can be seen here I had left a vague negatively painted outline of a tree. This is so because I want my tree to have a different base hue from the surrounding image so that it can pop out more acutely. I now fill in the primary hues I wish to use for the tree and also add yet another layer of primer where ever I see a need for it in the sky. These are the faint pink and stark purple shades I've added to the blue.

I then use my fingertips to blend in the hues in the tree as well as the sky. I usually reserve my index finger for touch up work and use the other fingers for specific shades where I can. Usually the middle finger for darks and the third for lights (My thumb and little finger don't smudge well :( but if yours work for you then even better!).

I now add in more coats of crayons to my drawing with the intent to make the tree more detailed. This includes the time I spend trying to make the bark more interesting. As a correction I am forced to add some blue between the main branches. I think I get away with it lightly in this painting because I had not coated my trunk too strongly and also because the coating was only a very light grey which takes the blue in an acceptable hue.





As you can see here this is the foundation of the eventual piece.


I believe it is important to keep visual interest for the viewer in mind whenever we draw. I needed something interesting in the painting now to hold the viewers attention. Just the one tree did not look promising as a subject for this painting. This is where I spied the profiles I exploited to add some emotion to this painting.

I use the darker hues now to give details to the canopy of the tree and a black 8B soft pencil to add shadows and character to the bark. I use a small pair of scissors as a scraping blade to highlight the profiles. I added an extra layer of light blue strokes to break the background with a faint horizon line to emphasize this depth.

I could not have known at the start of the painting that it would eventually turnout like this. However all the prep work I did to the paper still paid off because my tree pops nicely from the sky.

I hope this was useful. :)

This is my workstation and as you can see the beauty of crayon painting is the it needs practically no setup. :D

Birth

Music fueled late night sudden bout of inspiration.

Interpretation was tricky because the painting changed tracks several time during its creation. The main characters to note are the humanoid elemental, the womb or sieve, the shadow, and the snake.

Achivement

Woke up in the middle of the night to draw this. It talks about the creative and mundane parts of life and its legacy.

Sky study in orange

Tropical grove

I did a nature study in pastels at Pasir Ris park ths weekend (my first in a long while). I love working with Crayons cause its so much faster and such a low fuss medium compared to paints. I highly recommend grabbing a box of crayons and having a time of your life playing with the rich colors.

Rain clouds

 

I find cloudscapes the most fulfilling images to draw. I mean how can you go wrong with a system that's constantly changing in countless of new ways. I still managed to over exaggerate the sun in this drawing but overall I am happy how it turned out. The drawing does look much better than the scan has turned out too.

Lightening Strike

Thankfully I've only ever seen lighting strikes in pictures and on the telly but I think that's how it strikes the ground.

Note: I found a startling picture of a lightening strike on google and was quite surprised to see all the purple radiance. I should not have understated the color so much in my drawing. :(

Real lightening is such a fearsome sight and not like my timid probing at all...

Burst of energy

My fingers were really smarting when I finished this one! I must have rubbed of my fingerprints. (I had blisters at the tips of two fingers next morning)

I don't remember it this painful but I'm happy with the result...

Crayons

 

After almost 20 years I bought my self a box of oil pastels. I used to love the speed of working with pastels compared to oil or watercolor painting and I am really excited about drawing stuff again. I am starting a new label on this blog titled "crayons" so that its easy for readers to find the posts.

This first sketch started out to be a cow but I changed it halfway to make it into a neelgai :p (Though the face is a bit out of proportion for a neelgai and more like a reindeer's)