Miss Penelope Chi-Wawa

March 5, 2014 · by karencomics · in Character Design, Drawing-a-Day, Watercolour. ·

Drawing-a-Day 22:

Meet Miss Penelope, a lady of impeccable breeding and good taste. She may look demure and delicate, but she has nerves of steel when in a pinch. She’s the latest in my series of character sketches based on my doodle notebook. I think she may have to meet up with the swashbuckling gentleman and the scholarly fellow and they will all have to go on some adventures together!

Miss Penelope Chi-Wawa — ink and brush, watercolour

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Tags: art, character design, Chihuahua, Dog, drawing-a-day, illustration, Steampunk, Victorian, watercolour

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2 responses to “Miss Penelope Chi-Wawa”

Ulla Hennig March 7, 2014 at 1:28 am · · Reply →

Love that painting – the expression on her face, the colours, everything!

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- karencomics March 7, 2014 at 9:04 am · · Reply →
  
  Thank you , Ulla!
  
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Celtic Art

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Wolf and the Stones (pen & ink)

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Celtic Seahorses (pen and ink)

Celtic Seahorses (pen & ink, watercolour, coloured pencil)

Coloured Pencil

“Two Lips” — from a photo I snapped of a bunch of tulips someone had given me. As the petals started to fall away, they got more and more interesting. This one took quite a long time, lots of burnishing.

“White Rose” — I took a bunch of white silk roses into a class I was teaching one day, and we all had a good time trying to make them look natural, adding backgrounds and suggestions of colour.

“Sheltered” — a demonstration on doing an underpainting in dark grey pencil to establish the values turned into this.

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“Falling Apples” — When I teach a coloured pencil workshop, I often go buy a bag of apples and hand one out to everyone. Apples are excellent subjects for learning how to build up colour from light to dark. After my demo, he whole class goes back to their tables and becomes very quiet for a while — silence is the sound of creativity! One class I actually had time to draw my apple several times on the same page.

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“Pink Rose” — One of the most burnished coloured pencil paintings I have ever produced. This little thing is the size of a greeting card, and it took me many hours.

“Bear Hangout” — from a photo I took in Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo. There were no visible fences, and everyone wanted to know how I’d gotten so close to the bears! Usually I would just smile and look mysterious.

Woman in Blue — indigo and white Prismacolor pencils on toned paper

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The Blues — Indigo and white coloured pencils on toned paper _ ten minute pose

Man Forming a Triangle — coloured pencils on toned paper. Going through my sketches, I was amused to see how many similar poses I’ve drawn over the years — there are only so many ways the human body can fold up, after all. I thought this drawing made an interesting comparison with the previous one.

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Watercolours

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“Sunshine” — funny how cats always find the warm spot in the house!

“Bones of the Earth” — a mountain in the Montana Mission Range that has an oddly shaped top above the treeline. It is not a volcano, but I suspect there is a hollow at the top with a lake. However, I did not climb up there to see.

Wickaninnish Wind — This tree stands by the parking lot at Wickaninnish Beach , in Pacific Rim National Park.

“One Perfect Rose” — an anniversary card I made for my husband some years ago.

“Willow Banks” — part of a large wetland park at the base of Montana’s Mission Mountains that I visited once.

“Rainbow Pebbles” — many of the techniques described here are used in this painting

“Winter Tree” — a Christmas card I did for a friend; the white was all masked off with masking fluid, after which I could paint freely, knowing all that lovely snow would be preserved in pristine white paper.

“Storm Building” — I used a paper towel to lift colour out of a solid sky wash for the clouds, then dripped in a bit of grey, then more water for the backwashes.

pebble sampler — I make samplers of many of the techniques during class, using pebble shapes.

Wildly blooming

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“Long Beach Sketch” — the backwashes created by dripping water into a wet wash created the clouds and the misty effects in the rocks on the right.

“Edge of the Woods” — I started with very light washes to build up the background and lighter tones of the foreground; the dark trees went in last.

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The UFOs are coming! Or maybe they are flying hats. Suggested by one of the students, I thought it was a great idea. This demo used salt and gouache to make stars and the explosions (or maybe they are fireworks). The city is just simple brushstrokes with a flat brush.

This demo was to blend a nice sunset wash, and to show how to make very quick trees with brush scribbles.

This demo was to show lifting paint out of a blended wash (and add some more for shadows) to make clouds, and how to make aerial perspective by making distant things lighter and bluer. I wasn’t sure what the landscape was going to be, it sort of evolved as I went along.

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