Abstract colourful wheel

I found that lineart on pinterest and thought that I would like to try my watercolour pencils with them. Actually I have neglected that medium for quite some time (actually I didn't remember which colours I had - shame on me!). I tend to use my mediums not always in the way they are normally used - as it is the case here also. You are not to dip your pencils into the water - at least not as much as I did here. But as I mentioned before: I love those strong, bright, happy colours and I was downright happy when I applied the colours.
I used the rather famous and expensive Albrecht Dürer pencils together with the not so expensive watercolour pencils from Koh-i-Noor which is a Czech company. I cannot see the difference - and I bet you cannot, too. They can be bought in open stock here in Germany, and if the weather were not so bad as it was when I did the painting I would have gone straight off buying additonal pencils.

Fish with golden Ball

You can easily recognise similarities with the fish in the last blog post. There's a reason for it - I traced the first version and in the process did some changes to it. When I was satisfied with the result I put up my provisional light table (just a pane of glass with a lamp below it) and transfered the drawing to my drawing cardboard.
I did this for the first time, but it seems to me that it is a good procedure for playing around with a certain character - changing the way the eye looks, changing the fins and giving the hands something to hold.

Fish Character

Dotted Fish. Coloured pencils on drawing cardboard

I drew this fish after having had a look at quite a lot of fish. Of course this is a fantasy fish character, especially with the two arms and the red lips. The spots were done with stabilo fineliners, but the rest was coloured with polychromos coloured pencils blended with baby oil. 

Running Horse - final Version

This is the final version of the running horse. Yes, I admit, the hooves are one of the weak points of the painting / drawing. I know that some artists are dealing with the problem by placing the horses in high grass where the hooves cannot be seen; I want to get better at drawing them, and so I will be practising the drawing of hooves in the next weeks.

Strange Green Fairy

There is a group on deviantart which is called "color-me-club" with loads of lineart. I found this strange fairy there, and decided to colour it mostly in green with some blue spots - it looks to me like a kind of vegetable or cabbage fairy...

Actually this is something like a colour chart colouring page - I can see how all the green hues which I have (mostly polychromos pencils) look like when they are blended with baby oil. 

Running Horse - Work in Progress

One of my art goals for 2016 is getting better at drawing and colouring horses. Some time ago I got a book from Kobo called "Draw 50 horses", and I want to draw them all, maybe not only once but a few times. 

I first did a rough sketch on my sketch pad, and then put transparent paper on the sketch and went for the lines I wanted to keep. As you can see, the hooves are not very well done, and the back of the horse is too high. So the drawing is far from perfect, but I didn't want to fiddle too much with it. Instead of that I wanted to focus on the shading which I haven't finished yet. The forelegs still have to be done, as well as the hind legs. 

Orange Koifish

Koifish. Coloued pencils on drawing cardboard

After colouring the unicorn colouring page I wanted to get back at drawing my own subjects and then colouring them. And so I did a koi fish again. It is amazing how colourful those fish are in reality!

The Unicorn

I found the unicorn linedrawing on pinterest. I am a fan of mystery and fantasy stories and fantasy characters, and I love horses. So I picked the unicorn and worked on it with all the blue polychromos pencils I have. My final goal is to be able to draw horses myself, but tracing the print and transfering it to my drawing cardboard helps a lot with getting the feel for proportions.

And I am still fascinated by the way I can use the baby oil with my q-tips. Finally I can combine my love for vivid colours with my desire to keep control and to work in detail!

Koifish #3

I thought it would be nice to have a series of koi fish. This blue one has also been coloured with coloured pencils and baby oil. I don't know whether there is any koi fish of that colour, but who knows?

Lady in Red

Lady in Red - Colouring Page found on Pinterest

My focus for the month of January 2016 is on painting with coloured pencils (yes, I call it painting!), and my goal is to mix coloured in pages found on pinterest with coloured drawings of my own. 

This one I did as an exercise to work with my reds - mostly polychromos pencils blended with baby oil.

The round shape behind the head of the lady has been coloured with my stabilo fineliners. The design is much too detailed to do it with coloured pencils. 

Koifish #2

After having coloured a colouring page I thought it might be fine to draw my own colouring page and then colour it - and here it is! It's a koifish, coloured with mostly polychromos pencils and babyoil as a means to blend the colours.
I tried all my reds here, including light flesh and medium flesh. I must admit that I'm quite satisfied with the result!

Blue Fairy

It's only colouring. Colouring is something frowned upon as not having anything to do with art, a thing for children, with no creativity needed whatsoever. 

Colouring on the other hand is considered to be a therapeutic activity, something to help in times of stress, a means of relaxation with a zen-like quality.

For me colouring a colouring page is something to practise my coloured pencils with. With this blue fairy I used almost all of my blue coloured pencils from ultramarine to delft blue to blueviolet to cobalt blue. There is an artist called Jody Bergsma who loves to paint in shades of blue and I admire her for her use of the various shades of blue. She knows her blues - and I want to know mine as well. So I look for a colouring page which interests me and focus on my colours.

Lady with Hood

I have been looking for quite some time for something which makes coloured pencils more vivid and can be used for blending. I experimented with alcohol but that disappeared quicker than I could apply it on the drawing. The method I am using now is to pour a bit of baby oil into a small container and apply it with q-tips. I find q-tips much easier to control than a brush.