Cobalt

Inktober 2016: Oct 16 – Garibaldi

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101616-inktober-garibaldi-for-carol-final Garibaldi are the largest members of the Damselfish family, which surprised me. I’m only familiar with the smaller damselfish commonly found in people’s aquariums. Apparently Garibaldi are easy to find if you’re diving or exploring the sea with a glass-bottom boat. It’s hard to imagine something so colorful inhabiting our local waters!

101616-inktober-garibaldi-ink-onlyThis time I thought to scan the fish before painting it. It’s the largest drawing of Inktober 2016 so far and possibly the largest thing I have drawn all year. Someone offered me knitted socks in exchange for a Garibaldi painting – I figured if she was going to work that hard, I had better do the same! This fish takes up the entire 9″ x 12″ page from the Windpower pad. I put down the base drawing with the Kuretake #40 ink brush using several reference images. Now, on to the paint!   Read more

Inktober: Oct 11 – Toco Toucan

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101116-inktober-toco-toucanThe crab left an odd gap on my page, so I found something that would fill it right up. The Toco Toucan gets the job done! He’s mostly ink, with some color obviously on the head, feet, and that incredible beak. (Funny thing about toucans. Their bills are large, but not very powerful. It can be hard for them to crunch up a grape!) This one has a wash of PO62 Benzi Orange on the eye spot and beak, with a further wash of PO73 Pyrrole Orange to deepen the color, and PB28 Cobalt Blue to give a little shadow. The feet are PB28/PO62 mixed on the paper. Finally, there’s a streak of PBr7 Burnt Umber on the branch.

Background is PV19 Rose Deep and PB16 Phthalo Turquoise. Those two are an odd combination and I hated it for a minute. The turquoise is far too green to normally make a good purple, and I should have known that. Fortunately it smoothed out into a decent-looking red-violet. Drawn with the Kuretake #40 brush.

Reference photo from Wikipedia.

Inktober 2016: Oct 7 – Blue Damselfly

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100716-inktober-blue-damselfyI was fascinated with these insects as a kid! Always wanted to catch them, but someone told me they would bite, so I rarely even tried. Probably a good thing for the poor bugs I believed that tale!

Apparently this is a European damselfly, Enallagma cyathigerum. I would have seen Familiar Bluets, Enallagma civile. They’re all gorgeous, and always a treat when one lands nearby. This sketch began plein aire, since a Bluet landed while I was sketching the Bird of Paradise a few days ago. Of course it flew off a few seconds later! I found a photo taken from a similar angle and finished it up for Day 7. Not sure I love the Jadeite on the plant stem, but pretty happy with the rest of it.

TIL: Damselfly heads are really complicated! After finishing I realized that it actually has five pieces: two eyes of course, and three apparent sections between the eyes. In the ref, the left eye is nearly hidden. In the drawing, I sort of mixed up the left eye and the sections of the upper head. Might have to draw a damselfly head study to make up for my carelessness.

 

Inktober: Oct 6 – Kestrel Portrait

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100616-inktober-kestrel-head-portraitLove these birds! Saw one as a teenager and thought it was pretty cool to have a genuine Bird of Prey living right in my boring neighborhood.

Learned a couple things with this drawing. One, watch proportions! The head shape and eye size is a little different than the reference. It’s fine for practice, but not entirely *right*. Second, never use paint to do what you should have done with ink. I tried to get lazy and beef up one of the black neck stripes with Sodalite, and it just looked weird. Better to have just scratched away at it a little longer.

Third, perhaps, plan ahead. I was going to draw the entire bird and could see after a while that maybe 60% of him would fit on the page by the time I got done. Oops. Head portrait it is! This was about all I had time to draw anyway. Might do a full-bird drawing and stretch it over two days.

Reference is this Wikipedia photo.