The Chalk Tortoise walks great distances all the while drawing what he sees on anything near by, including his shell. Originally I was going to do a rendition of the Tortoise and the Hare, but decided to leave that for another time. The drawing is with graphite and the chalk is with Gouache. I was going to use actual chalk pens but all the stores were closed. I think it worked out though.
Peter And The Wolf is a classic story, and one that I really enjoy. This is my own take on the story with a slightly older Peter wearing a Wolf skin and holding a real musket. I don’t consider myself a very good at typography but I tried to do some hand lettering because I like the alternate sinister title. I used Graphite for the drawing and Gouache for the background.
Playing around with mediums I usually don’t touch. I used charcoal, acrylics, and graphite for this one. I just realize now that the hunters foot is backwards, he has a left foot for his right. Oh well. I’m sure there was a hunter you did have a left right foot at some point. I’m hoping the rabbit can get away.
I had this as a super faint sketch and couldn’t see a way to transfer it onto a canvas. So I thought I’d try out gouache. Its so different from oil I didn’t even know if I should paint from dark to light. So I did some quick exercises below to find out. The evil bunny is the one where I figured it out. Basically doing a mid tone as a base and then adding the shadows and highlights on top seems to be the way to go. Although I’m not super happy on how it turned out, but with practice I’ll find a way.
Evil bunny rabbit
Finally I’m posting the finished painting. This has taken so long due to a bunch of reasons. One being that I used this as an experimental piece and ran into many problems and challenges. This is a layered painting with the figure and cosmic dust being the 1st layer and the abstract background being the 2nd layer. This is also ‘Glow in the dark’ which was difficult to create. But I am quite happy with the result. Perhaps I would like to redo the background in the future. The strings coming off the arrows are bendable steel rods that I spray painted white. If you want to see the glow in the dark affect better than go to my website handsforeyes.com.
Here are some process pictures and side by side comparison to show the glow affect.
I have some work up at the Walls gallery in Amsterdam including the Nightlife series and Return From Matter. The opening is January 11th at 4:00pm and is located at Prinsengracht 737.
I have to say after all the work on these I still like the drawings more, but that seems to be the case with most of my work. I’m a sucker for graphite. They look much more subdued then I intended but it was nice to do something without so much contrast. Each painting is 55cm x 70cm and is oil on wood panel.
