She was inspired by the Belladonna Atropa Plant. This is also my first full sized F6 painting. I am so happy to have finished it well.
Haku – Dragon Boy
Hi Guys! This weekend was a Studio Ghibli Weekend! I have been a long time fan of the studio and absolutely love all the tales that they create. My absolute favorite is Howl’s Moving Castle and Spirited Away comes into the top of my list as well. Since I was looking to draw something Ghibli, I decided to give the boy dragon, Haku a go.
I first planned the art in my Leuchtturm1917 Fauxbonichi and I used some new pans I got from Sennelier for the colors. Drawing the dragon was a challenge too and showing his “fur” was another, luckily I kind of pulled it off. The original art had the paper dolls that attacked haku, but i kidn of forgot to inclued it in the finished piece.
I wanted to keep Haku mystical and young. I wanted to show how pretty he was as well and drew him face forward with his dragon form wrapped around him. The background was anoother galaxy background, although next time I should really do something more about it.
I used a 300 GSM coldpress paper from Pack of Possibilities from Artisan MNL. Its a 5 x7 paper that takes to my abuse well.
Below the cut is the pictures of the Scan and the Photo I took of the final
Restart, Refresh, Rewind
Hey you guys! I know I have been absent for a while now and yep, I have been kidnapped by work and I have been in and out of the hospital a while now. Anyway, I am back and hopefully for good this time.
In my absence I never forgot art, so as a reparation gift and to make up for the absence, I am presenting the following video.
I will be restarting my VLOG and youtube channel as well as this blog and update my art here more. I do hope that you can support me once again.
The video below is my painting of Jiroutachi of Touken Ranbu. Love the character style and yes, he’s a guy. But he’s just so pretty! Hope you enjoy
You can see the original at : http://fav.me/d9nr41u
Read More…
Birds
Sparrow 2015 5×7 Hotpress Paper
Birds, cute feathery tweet-tweets in an array of different colors. I love them. Its just that I have never painted them and when I tried, If ound that they were fun to paint, challenging as I could not make their feathers look stiff. I also had to check the light that bounces off their feathers, and their sharp expressions. Birds are just beautiful creatures.
The first trial I did of the birdsa t least after the owls was the picture on the left. The painting was done on Hotpress paper,which was pretty new to me. But it was fun to do and a light project for me to create on that day.
Sleepy Sparrow 2015 (c) Little Miss Marikit Watercolor
I had to figure out how to light it, give it life and make it look fluffy. I still have a lot of things to learn about painting feathers so this is a treat. It really challenged me to focus on details and create focus on the softness of the bird.
Color is also important when creating birds. you have to make sure that you capture their vibrant feathers. And I tried to do it in this rendition of a hummingbird with inktense pencils and watercolor on hotpress.
I definitely have to do more and create more birds to learn them but its fun learning in the process. And I hope i do justice to these beautiful animals.
Hummingbird, 2015 Hotpress watercolor (c) Littlemissmarikit
Festus the Dragon and the ARGO II
Festus the Dragon, Watercolor, Coldpress 2015 by Little Miss Marikit (Maia Castaneda)
I am still on a Percy Jackson Hype. In fact, I should be posting art of the demigods right now ( I could probably do it after this quick post) but I am more excited to blog about this bronze Dragon. Festus the dragon – a character from the Heroes of Olympus Series by Rick Riordan. I love that series and I am on the 3rd read. ( well audio book – I love listening to the voices). This bronze dragon was created from Celestial Bronze, and fixed by Leo Valdez in Heroes of Olympus to transport them on their quest.
I painted Festus to challenge myself, really. I used to do a ton of details in my painting and I knew i could do it but had no inspiration to. I needed to move out of my comfort zone (doing busts) and start doing things with background and details. I am pretty confident in painting bronze (old things) so this was a good art piece for me.
I failed the BG though. I should have planned more.
Anyway, Festus was broken in the first book and was reborn into this
Painting this lady on Hotpress
Grey and Pink watercolor on 300 gsm hotpress paper A5 size
The painting on the right, tentatively titled Grey and Pink was created on Hotpress Watercolor paper. It was my first time working on this type of paper and the experience was– a learning experience.
Hotpress paper is a lot smoother and thicker and really opaque, you can’t use any light box underneath so either you transfer your drawing on to the paper with carbon paper or a similar technique with tracing paper or use an art projector which i used for this one. You can directly draw on the paper as well but you hve to be careful with erasing lines… its not as it feels that it roughens up if you erase too much. Unlike coldpress paper which has the slight ridges its more durable to pencil work.
Anyway, what i noticed with this paper is that it doesn’t puddle the water, and it doesnt soak in the pigment and it dries FAST.The water stays on the paper only allowing for some blending time, . Layering was hard on this, since i was used to blending on paper on coldpress paper, which has more tooth and can puddle water and allow for some more bleding time. I am now thinking of using Gum arabic to help a little with painting on Hotpress, but i am not sure.
Using, some transparent washes helped on creating more depth. I also tried to use alcohol and other media to create the interesting effects and experiement on this paper.
On the flipside, Hotpress paper also produces some vivid colors on little paint and it gives it interesting edges and lines when painitng,
I am used to painting on coldpress, So i was thinking i could layer on this, but this was hard to do on hotpress. Its a great one for quick paintings, because it dries fast, and its really really smooth, which I like. I just need to learn how to control the paint on it.
Does anyone else paint on Hotpress? If so, can anyone share tips? I would love it
marikit studios 