Mook

I created a series of sketches for a previous assignment entitled "Antarctic Adventure" and we were supposed to imagine museum exhibits for the given title and draw them (I veered a bit off the museum setting though). I loved the sketches, but as most of them were sketched across two-page spreads of the sketchbook, they looked "ugly". Hence I decided to re-create the images and to include them as part of my portfolio for the Bologna Children's Book festival next month.

The series is about a girl named Mook who lives in the Antarctic and these are scenes from her life.

Mook and her pet polar bear

 

Penguin-herder

Mook goes seal-fishing

Underwater sleigh

 

Mook makes a new friend

Wolf Alice (continued)

So I went to another etching session last Friday, and continued working on the same Wolf Alice etching plate. This time I learned the sugar lift and aquatint techniques. The technician was also showing another student how to do spit-bite, so now I know how that works as well. The only technique that I have yet to try is hard ground. Saw a student working with that and learned that you can actually work in stages and after adding the hard ground onto an already etched plate, you could still see the previous etching... which allows you to continue working on the same image. Hopefully I can try that this Friday!

The following is the new Wolf Alice print. This isn't complete as I would prefer darker lines and more detail on the trees.

Wolf Alice (after sugar-lift and aquatint)

Wolf Alice

I was experimenting with etching last Friday. Well, maybe 'experimenting' was the wrong word, I was still learning about the technique and still stuck on the basics. I was wondering what the illustrations I did for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories would look like if reproduced with the etching technique, and so I chose the Wolf Alice illustration and proceeded to do just that.

The following prints were done from an etching using soft ground for a soft pencil-mark look. I actually have not used hard ground and I'm not sure what the effect would have been. In any case, I learned about the hand-wipe, which is a way of cleaning the plate to really remove the ink. Etching is a pretty time-consuming (and expensive!) process, but I just really love the end result! I hope to learn about different-coloured inks and sugar lift in my session tomorrow.

Wolf Alice 1 (after the plate was hand-wiped)

Wolf Alice 2 (without hand-wiping and selective cleaning with tissue)

Totoro & Friends

One of my favourite characters of all time has to be Totoro, from the animated film My Neighbour Totoro by Studio Ghibli. I've created a lot of Totoro-related objects as part of my class exercises while I was still with The One Academy.

Kaleidescope of Totoro and Friends!

Totoro Popup: this took a lot of late nights and early mornings to finish

The latest bunch of Totoro miscellany I created was an etching that I did as part of an etching workshop at Camberwell College. I first printed the etching and painted over it with watercolour.

 Etching plate

Etching print (prior to adding watercolour)

Final result (etching and watercolour)

Rabbit in a Hanbok

I created this picture as part of an assignment during my first term in The One Academy. Students were supposed to create a picture using lines, dots, and shapes, as well as make use of textures and complementary colours. It's one of my favourites (got full marks for it too!). It's even showcased on the TOA website link #8 (the last time I checked it's still there :P).

Watercolour, artline pen,
"white craft fur", and black string

Sketches over the Weekend

These sketches were drawn over the weekend, after the snowfall left me in a very uplifted mood, and were also inspired by the songs "U" and "Marry Me" by Kim Hyun Joong. I'm thinking of perhaps developing these sketches further into a series.

Little Red Riding Hood

little red riding hood (screenprint)

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories

Over the Christmas term break, I decided to enter the House of Illustration competition to create a set of illustrations for the book The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter. The following are the images I submitted. These were first drawn in pencil, scanned into the computer and colour added in Photoshop.

This is the front and back cover. The front is an illustration of The Lady of the House of Love. The back cover is from Wolf-Alice. I particularly liked this one.

 Puss-In-Boots

The Bloody Chamber

The Company of Wolves

Finally It's Up!

Being an ex-IT consultant does not make one an instant expert in customising blog templates!

In any case, I've finally given up on making that perfect blog and have decided to live with some "imperfections". So here it is, my first post. I thought I'll start with a simple piece of work developed from a sketch in my new sketch book.

I'll post my previous sketches and artworks in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!